Synopsis

Land Sick portraits the journey of a group of travelers. Sailors, flight attendants, and truck drivers. Their daily issues, the road, their constant search for a moment of absence and the impossible quest for the way back home.

Story of making the movie

It was three years before a first copy of LAND SICK was finally ended. The first year and a half we kept following the subjects around with the camera. It was a complicated production process because, as you can see in the film, they're hard to find. The later period we spent mostly in the editing room. Trying to find a way to picture a feeling, something between loneliness and the need to keep moving.

Land Sick centers on several characters: three sailors from Veracruz, three flight attendants based in Mexico City, and three truck drivers from Ixtapaluca, Estado de Mexico. You could say that Land Sick is a documentary about their lives, their families and their travels. But It also has to do with a classical subject: the impossible quest for the way back home, the urgent need for a pause, a moment of absence and the sheer fact that in order to come back one first has to leave.

The social, environmental, gender and even age differences between the characters is evident. Even so, their discourses seem to share something. They seem to share a way of being. As if they were some kind of great character. Some Frankenstein cobbled together out of pieces of Laura, Lizette, Linda, Enrique, Cigarrin, Ricardo, Andres, Wolf and Chavez.

Land Sick is all about movement, instability and motion sickness.

A message from the director

About the director

Alejandra was born in San Luis Potosi and lives in Mexico City since her childhood. She studied Film Direction in the Centre d’Estudios Cinematogrfàics in Catalunya, Barcelona, were she lived for almost 6 years. She has developed and directed cultural content and image campaings as well, among these the animated one minute film series “Imaginantes” (Imaginatives).

She has written and directed fiction short films and the full lenght documentary “Mal de Tierra” (Land sick). She wrote the adaptations and managed the script development of “Soy tu fan” (I’m your fan”) a mexican sitcom. She has also coordinated documentary workshops for youngsters. She is currently developing content, promoting independent production at Emigre Film and working on her first feature script.

Next projects: I'm currently writting mi first fiction feature. The work-in-progress title is: Semana Santa. It's about a small family's vacation in a beach resort during the eastern hollydays. The film will show how family can't be a formula, and how the closest personal relationships aren't always what they seem. The film's objective is to frame the middle class mexican family model and to reflect on it.

I also directed a shot cut after filmming MAL DE TIERRA, it's called PERRA (Bitch) You can watch a teaser in emigrefilm.com