Meet Gianfranco Fernández-Ruiz

We recently connected with Gianfranco Fernández-Ruiz and have shared our conversation below.

Gianfranco, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?

I don’t know how much of my resilience is nature or nurture. My mom worked wild hours as a kid. My grandmother worked round the clock. All of the women around me made the world turn. Sweat on the brow seemed an institutional tenet of the Ruiz household – I took it with my café con leche every morning before the sun came up.

It’s hard to put my finger on the where of it. I’ve failed a lot, and so much of what looks like success sits on the heels of failure. I fail every day, so let’s call the “where” my personal collection of failures, of which there seems no end. But failure can inspire. For me, every opposition is a lesson in patience, an opportunity to define community, and an opportunity for joy.

For many years, I thought resilience was, in part, the fight to survive. Problem is, when you’re calling for a fight you find a fight. And then life is only survival. I’ve started passing that attribute to many of my characters. I understand that world. I’m learning a new formula for resilience that I feel like I learned watching my grandfather slumber in the middle of the day.

Take your time to react. Take a breath if it passes you by, because if it does, it wasn’t for you.

But, you know, it could be a stars thing – I am a Capricorn rising.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I write and direct films. Visual storytelling. I’m on the side of it where most of my work is narrative. Strange as it sounds for a filmmaker, that’s not always typical. Filmmakers have to find a way to make a living, and narrative is so insular. You’re telling personal stories, so your bottom line isn’t really the priority. It’s searching for partners who believe in your vision, who want the same as you. My fortune is in the wealth of collaborators who have backed my work.

That said, the question I’m most asked whenever the subject of narrative filmmaking comes up is, “what kind of movies do you make?” I do like to stay flexible on that, but I favor relationships that invert gender norms. I love writing a woman who is capable of anything, who takes it on the chin. Or men who present with this electric bravado, but it’s all just show. Performance plays a major role in my characters. I’m always picking at scenarios like scabs – what happens when a person stumbles into a different tax bracket, or their lover changes where they get their coffee each morning? How does their behavior suddenly reflect their success or their suspicions? These are just questions that I ask myself, that I think suggest something operatic, something stage-like about daily life.

Storytelling is one part alchemy and one part anthropology.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

Time has got to be my number one. Had I achieved success as a director any sooner, it might have ruined the hard parts of my life that I look back on so fondly. I mean it was hard, I’m a lot grayer today because of my experiences, but I learned a lot about grace – that might be my number two, actually – be soft with yourself.

We’re all just people. We’re all wrestling with ourselves, with what we prioritize, and why we fall into cycles. Flaws make life worth living. Flaws make every single person different from the last, unique from everybody else. My scars, my grays, I recognize them as signs of life, and I really embrace that part of me. Shoot. Getting sexier every year.

I have to be honest, I’m not sure I have a third. Wait! Laugh! I know it sounds like some expression you see hung up in your grandmother’s kitchen, I know. But I think you have to laugh. If we go back to the resilience question, that’s the switch I’d make. Like, let’s keep what I said, actually, but let’s add laughter to the mix.

We’ve all got limited resources, time, energy, focus etc – so if you had to choose between going all in on your strengths or working on areas where you aren’t as strong, what would you choose?

My field is contingent on team work. When I’m writing, I see that as my sport. I’m uninhibited there. I have something to say and I say it. It can be messy, it can be daunting, but it can’t be wordless. I always found that to be a funny part of a visual storyteller’s process – it’s words on a page.

All of this is to say that I think a writer/director’s chief responsibility is to become stronger on the page. I love this quote from Margaret Atwood about that, she says, “A word after a word after a word is power.” As a filmmaker, those words call meaning forth, elicit a feeling that form the beginnings of an image. Your instrument in painting the auteur’s canvas, or in a successful career in film is the pen. I think it’s better to go all in on that.

It’s sounds simple. It isn’t. It feels like an exorcism. It takes hours, weeks, years of ritual. But all good art develops over time. When I feel ready to find new collaborators, I do. That’s my favorite part of the job. It’s where there’s most release for me because I’m picking people who want to add to my ideas. There’s little risk here. But finding the right collaborators is an art.

I’m casting people who complement my strengths. I’m not talking about actors. That comes later. I’m talking about my producers, my composers, my cinematographers. That’s where I think efforts in a well-rounded team go for a director. Shout out to my producers Gus Murray and Sergio Lira! They really help me organize my thoughts, synthesize them to something more clear and concise. I need that!

Point is, my collaborators help me elevate what I want to say, and those little words on a page evolve into a collection of images, that, when strewn together, craft cinema. So I say, in the film industry, the best thing one can do is invest in writing, and then invest in people who make your writing a thrill.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.gianfrancofernandezruiz.com
• Instagram: @gianfranco_f_ruiz
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/directorgfr
• Other: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm11719260/
  https://vimeo.com/gianfrancofr

Image Credits

Zach K. Johnson
Mario Vega
Zhirayr Avetisyan
Joewi Verhoeven
Miko Malkhasyan
Oscar Ignacio Jimenez