Special guests travel to southern New Mexico for 2023 Las Cruces International Film Festival
Leah Romero
LAS CRUCES, NM ― The eighth annual Las Cruces International Film Festival kicked off this week with several feature screenings and special guests, including actors, directors and producers.
The LCIFF takes over Las Cruces for five days each spring allowing filmmakers from all over the world to gather and share their work. The festival is also known for bringing big name members of the entertainment industry to southern New Mexico.
This year, special screenings included “Land of Dreams,” “The Show” and “The Count of Monte Cristo.”
‘Land of Dreams’: ‘A love letter to New Mexico’
LCIFF 2023 kicked off Wednesday, April 12 with a special showing of the 2021 political satire “Land of Dreams,” directed by Shirin Neshat and Shoja Azari. The film stars Sheila Vand, Matt Dillon, William Moseley and Anna Gunn as well as Isabella Rossellini, Christopher McDonald, Gaius Charles and Adrian Luna.
Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.
The movie was filmed in New Mexico for several months in late 2020 near Albuquerque, Las Vegas, Farmington and outside Las Cruces.
Neshat, Azari, Charles and other members of the film’s production team traveled to Las Cruces this week to talk to audiences. Neshat is firstly a visual artist and told the Sun-News that she frequently came to New Mexico before 2020 to scout locations and shoot video for an installation of hers. She said she took 200 photographs in 2019 in preparation for the film.
“I think the film is quite an experience because it’s the real work of visual artists, so it’s very visual. But it’s also very politically charged,” she said. “It’s about America and an immigrant’s perspective about America … It’s also very meaningful and layered and so I am hoping that the local people see kind of a love letter to New Mexico.”
She added that the proximity of New Mexico to the Mexican border played on the message of being an outsider – something that Neshat and Azari are familiar with as Iranian-born artists.
Neshat said she and Azari are already planning their next project in New Mexico.
“We actually just went (Wednesday) to White Sands desert and we are dreaming about our next project to be shot again in New Mexico. With the same team of people,” Neshat said. “We worked with a lot of local people and for the photographs, for the video and for the movie, same people. So we have now a community.”
Read more about the Las Cruces International Film Festival:
- 'Breaking Bad' actor Giancarlo Esposito talks career, filming in New Mexico
- 2023 Las Cruces International Film Festival will honor Giancarlo Esposito
- New Mexico-filmed movie to open LCIFF
‘The Count of Monte Cristo’: ‘This is not the book’
“The Count of Monte Cristo” is a 2002 adaptation of the classic novel by Alexandre Dumas. The film stars Jim Caviezel, Guy Pearce, Dagmara Dominczyk, Luis Guzmán, Richard Harris and a young Henry Cavill. Kevin Reynolds directed.
Reynolds, known for such other films as “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” and “Waterworld,” visited Las Cruces Friday, April 14 to introduce the classic film and answer questions posed audience members.
In his introduction, he explained that the film was shot in Malta and Ireland over about four months.
“This is not the book. Just pick your brain and erase whatever you know about the book because this is a version of it,” Reynolds told audiences. “The book, as you know, is 1,500 pages long and we had two hours to tell the story.”
He said people get upset because not all of the book characters made it into the film, but the story had to be edited down.
Reynolds told the Sun-News that his love of history plays a major part in what projects he tackles. He majored in history originally then went on to law school. He said he did not enjoy practicing law so turned to filmmaking and applied to film school.
“It was a little insane, you know, to think back on it now, but you have to be sort of young and stupid to take chances,” he said.
Reynolds also takes part in the writing process of his film projects. He said a good script and a unique story are what draws him to a project. True stories interest him in particular.
“If you read a script, you go ‘alright, I'm willing to devote the next year or two of my life to this’ because that's what it amounts to. It’s going to take you that long to realize it,” Reynolds said. “You have to be a little picky and read something to go, OK, ‘I like this enough to go through that,’ and that's what you do each time.”
He added that he has never filmed a movie in New Mexico but would like the opportunity. Reynolds spent about seven years living on Holloman Air Force Base as a child when his father was stationed there.
“I have a lot of fond memories of this part of the world, but it’s been a while. I don’t recognize anything anymore. It’s changed a lot in 50 years,” he said.
Leah Romero is the trending reporter at the Las Cruces Sun-News and can be reached at 575-418-3442, LRomero@lcsun-news.com or @rromero_leah on Twitter.
Others are reading: