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 full series here.
Director María Luisa Santos grew up in Costa Rica and has previously centered much of her directorial work on stories based in her country, exploring themes of home and a place’s ability to hold memories.
In her newest short-form documentary, Endlings, Santos goes a different direction: both thematically and geographically. From the United States, she covers the universal experience of grief — examining loss, extinction and continuance as they show up in human interactions, nature and the idea of memory itself. KBIA’s Jennie Matos spoke with Santos about Endlings, premiering at True/False. Here's an excerpt from their conversation.
Jennie Matos: Going into the development of the film, where did you all get this idea from, and what did you want to convey to viewers?
María Luisa Santos: I'm currently in an MFA program at Stanford University, so it was part of the program. I normally make films that are very place-based, and I am currently not in the place where I normally make films, which is Costa Rica, the place where I'm from. So I was kind of struggling with how to make films in this new space, and I was also grieving the loss of my grandma, and I didn't really know how to approach that.
So I first started actually going to pet cemeteries and talking to people who were grieving their pets because it felt like an easier space to access than asking people in regular cemeteries or human cemeteries how their loss was being grieved.
And then, I mean, I'm a big environmentalist, and I care a lot about the environment, and I am also constantly grieving our planet and it kind of became — it snowballed into this same thing. The film kind of became like an act of grieving. I think that's the best answer, even though it's a little abstract.
I hope people feel something. I hope that it makes them feel connected to the history on a planet that is full of so many wonderful things.
Matos: You talked about those themes of grief and that being almost like the centerpiece of the film. What do you want audiences to take away from that theme and your feelings going into this film?
Santos: I hope people feel something. I hope that it makes them feel connected to the history on a planet that is full of so many wonderful things.
Even though we're also losing a lot of things constantly, and there's a lot of grief, I also think, I hope, there's this sense of awe and wonder that we belong to this planet that has been around for a long time, you know, where life has been developing for a long time, and the creatures that have been in this planet and that will continue to emerge in this planet. They're amazing.
