This story is part of True/False Conversations, a series of in-depth interviews with the filmmakers of this year’s True/False Film Fest. Find the rest of them here.
A piñata is a decorative symbol of celebration in the childhoods of many Latinos, whether it was at church gatherings or family birthdays. Director Daniel Larios sat down with KBIA’s Cristal Sanchez to talk about how this popular Latin tradition of hitting a piñata brought him through an emotional rollercoaster of grief, both with his faith and heritage.
Here's an excerpt from their conversation:
Daniel Larios: It's funny. Because I've worked in non-fiction mostly my whole career, but anytime I've made a film, I think it scared me to go there. In many ways I found nonfiction way more intimidating cause with fiction you always have the veneer of artificiality that you can hide behind a bit so I can, like, be a little more critical of certain things without feeling like I'm directly offending family members and their perspectives or things like that.
Cristal Sanchez: How was it like showing so much of your childhood and your own relationship with your faith?
Larios: This film is not like an anti-faith film or an anti-religion film. It's an, and I will happily say though, it's an anti-theocracy film. My issue is not with religion or faith in and of itself, I think it's with the weaponization of faith and religion, which I think is actually a great insult to the very personal experiences people have with faith when they try to like when these like larger bodies try to weaponize what people believe as a means for, you know, capitalists and like imperialist gain. That's the thing I’ll happily say like I'm opposed to within the context of the film in a voice. And it's not like I don't think that it's like a giveaway, like a subtle thing at all. Happily, you know the whole foreground that but yeah, I think seeing that in my own life as someone who was born in the US because my parents had to flee El Salvador, but they were also raised in an American born evangelical tradition that also the church structurally, you know, there are many, a good, generous people in it who helped my parents along the way. And I can't ignore that they also help me, like I wouldn't be alive. And like with a college education if I hadn't been part of that church and I like, I'm, I completely have to own up to that. But at the same time, that tension always exists of like so much of my upbringing has been in this, like American-tige context and so much of my my worldview as a Salvadorian is someone who's like forever under the shadow of American Hegemony.
Sanchez: How does this film explore the subject of finding your heritage?
Larios: A lot of us in Latin America, particularly in countries like El Salvador where it's like very small and centralized and really a lot of us don't even know, like I'm very clearly not a white person, but like I don't know what indigenous tribes my family comes from. I’ve tried to do the work to find out, and I'm still, that's like still an ongoing process, but you can't help but know that some of that is in you. If even if linguistically, like there's a reason why no country in Latin America speaks the same way, the same version of Spanish, it's because it's all altered and modified by the way indigenous language has been integrated into each one, and indigenous practice and culture has been integrated into each one, and other influences from other Immigrant groups or from like the slave trade and you know the forced movement of African peoples to Latin America that forms part of it. So, you can try to erase peoples, but they'll never go away.
