Chamaca is a narrative short film that I wrote and directed in 2019. The film was completed in 2020 and screened at Cine Tonala, a renowned art-house cinema in Mexico City, just before the pandemic hit.

In 2017, just as Mexico City held drills to mark the anniversary of the deadly 1985 earthquake, a seismic shock struck the metropolis again, collapsing several buildings. Amongst the hundreds of fatalities were an unconfirmed number of undocumented foreign workers trapped in buildings that were not authorized to be heavy occupancy units. The bizarre events that followed—the news spectacle, the coverups, the shock, confusion, and subsequent numbness of the citizenry—form the backdrop of CHAMACA. 

In the film, our protagonist—an 11-year old Korean girl stranded by the disaster—wakes up in the home of a curmudgeonly old Mexican man, just as a media story of another girl named 'Frida Sofia' trapped alive under rubble grips the city. As the day progresses, it becomes clear that the old man is ill-equipped to care for Chamaca, leading the girl into a panic attack. She unravels in the shower, as steam transforms into white plumes of dust, evocative of earthquake rubble. The girl, now dust-covered and ghost-like, aimlessly wanders about a neighborhood park. She encounters the old man's neighbor, a teenager who mentions the ‘Frida Sofia’ story. Apparently, there was no girl trapped in the rubble; the whole thing a mere media fabrication.

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