Short and Sweet: Los Mosquitos

Films about immigrants often become films about immigration, and the personal and individual experience is lost in the noise of a larger debate. Not so in “Los Mosquitos,” the new short from Austin-based filmmaker Nicole Chi.

The film, which plays as part of the Narrative Shorts Program at South by Southwest, goes into the home that 15-year-old Aby shares with Aunt Magda. As Thanksgiving looms, Aby must contemplate how to navigate her home life now that it has been complicated by the arrival of new young cousin, Nata.

Austin Chronicle: In the press notes, you mention the Alvarez family, who you knew from your short “Comadre.” How did they influence “Los Mosquitos”?

Nicole Chi: “Los Mosquitos” is a fictionalized version of the Alvarez family, interpreted by themselves. I had met Magda, the mom-like figure in the film, back in 2019 when I freshly arrived to Austin, and since then kept my [relationship] with her and her family. It was in 2022 that I started playing with the idea of really exploring and researching about their experiences as a Honduran family in Austin, and the new family dynamics that came to being with the arrival of Aby first, and then later Nata.

Without their openness and desire to speak about their experiences, the film wouldn’t have come to exist. I think ultimately casting them in the roles for the film was a blessing for the project, and it really added depth and authenticity to the portrayal we were trying to achieve together.

AC: As someone who grew up with three siblings and only one bathroom, the opening scene both brought back memories and gave an immediacy to the story. I was wondering about developing that scene, as a powerful shorthand for being in such close confines.

NC: Since this is a short film, I was thinking on ways in which we can effectively tell a lot, or several things in a single sequence. And so, I’m so glad you were able to read into so much contextual information about the size of the house they live in, and the fact that they are forced to share everything, even if it’s not their desire. These forced-circumstances and forced-bonds was something that I wanted to get a glimpse of in that first opening sequence, so as to physically materialize the tension that a lot of families experience in their already tense process of migrating. All these details add layers to the challenging process of migration.

AC: So many stories about immigration focus on politics that the emotional and psychological cost of being uprooted is often ignored. Was it a conscious decision to refocus the conversation with this short?

NC: I felt from the beginning that in order to have people from other communities meditate and relate on the immigrant experience it was necessary to find a throughline that felt very universal. So it was definitely a conscious decision my co-writer, Fumiya Hayakawa, and I made to avoid directly speaking about facts like migration points, laws, or how, when, and why they decided to migrate, but to focus on the human drama of longing for family and to belong, which really translates to experiences beyond the political aspect of migrants in the United States. This, I want to think, makes the film echo in a stronger way, and beyond audiences who are already conscious of the vicissitudes of the migrant experience.

AC The timing of the story, around Thanksgiving, and what that means to the characters, is fascinating, as is a representation of the definitionally American holiday as something other than the “turkey and stuffing” cliché. Why that particular holiday?

NC: I came to Austin to the grad film program at UT, and I had never experienced Thanksgiving before that, since I am originally from Costa Rica. So when I started going to the family gatherings of all these Mexican and Honduran families, I realized how they came to make this super-American holiday their own thing. And there was a real beauty to that because it speaks of their assimilation process, you know, like having a turkey next to a pot full of tamales and having the children hitting piñata in the backyard.

And I guess in a way, that’s what I think the U.S. is all about, this cultural mix coming together and interacting with each other. I also chose to go for Thanksgiving because this young characters get imbued in this festiveness and this massive family gathering, and that reminder of the absence of that in their lives just really sets off complicated emotions in particular to Aby, the teenager and protagonist of the film.

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Los Mosquitos

Narrative Short Program 1, World Premiere

Tuesday, March 12, 3:45pm, Alamo South Lamar

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