Meet Andrés Mejia Plazas

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Andrés Mejia Plazas a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Andrés, thank you so much for making time for us today. We can’t wait to dive into your story and the lessons you’ve learned along the way, but maybe we can start with something foundational to your success. How have you gone about developing your ability to communicate effectively?

As a non-native English speaker, I’m always learning, adapting and trying to expand my vocabulary. Being a director is 100% reliant on communicating effectively to the actors, producers, and every creative in the room so that everyone understands what the vision for a certain project is and have everyone be on the same page. It doesn’t mean that there is no dialogue or discussion of creative differences, but it’s the collaboration what makes everything fall into place. It’s mainly practice, but has helped me develop the skill is reading criticism of other films, or filmmakers talk about their projects and how they explain their choices, or their admiration and choices for the projects they love and inspire them.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

I am a film writer, director, and producer and I enjoy telling stories about queer people and female characters, through a colorful lens and comedic or absurd approaches to situations. I have made two short films, both currently in post-production. The first is a drama called “What If Birds Aren’t Singing, They’re Screaming” which I am excited to share that we are so close to finishing with. The second film is a comedy called “SACRILEGE!” Both draw from personal experiences but are far from being autobiographical because the leads are female characters, with completely different backgrounds than mine. I prefer to clarify that I speak my mind through these characters as opposed to framing myself a certain way.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Decisiveness is always a main one because being a director is about communicating and making choices. Even if at some point all options seem like they’d make a great film, one of them probably draws you in more on a personal level. Sometimes in pre-production when I don’t know what I want, I list all the things I’m sure I don’t want at all because that narrows it down by a lot.

Another quality is knowing the history of film. I feel guilty about not having seen all classics, and it’s an everyday feeling because there’s so many of them that of course I’ll spend my entire life trying to catch up. Specially because I end up comparing myself to veteran directors and I have to stop and remind myself that they are older so of course they’ve seen way more films from back in the day than me.

I think the last quality is being authentic to myself. It’s a privilege to be a queer person in an environment that celebrates it, but even when I feel like not everyone gets my struggles and my frustrations with the world I just end up pushing myself to put those struggles into a film. Instead of making a film only about a character coming out, why not add more elements like religious guilt, or other characters with different struggles.

As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?

Honestly I have to give a lot of credit to Mariah Carey’s memoir “The Meaning of Mariah Carey” because I really admire her level of resilience, and I kept writing down quotes of hers when reading it. Actually one of them is a bible quote she references, which I still think about a lot even though I am not very religious: “The one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world” 1 John 4:4. I don’t really know what context it is part of in the bible, but as an artist it resonates with me because you can interpret it as “there is more potential to you that we can see” and that is just so encouraging to think of.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @andres.mejiap
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrés-mejía-032a40290/
• Twitter: @mejiaplaandres
• Other: Letterboxd: andresmejia

  I am additionally working on a vertical short-format talk show:
  Instagram: @chins_way
  TikTok: @chinsway
  YouTube: Chin’s Way The Talk Show

Image Credits

Neil (Liu) Lingyu
Zuzanna Mach