Exclusive: Inzomnia Producer Mariana Méndez Alejandre Talks Taking Notes From Guillermo del Toro

Producer Mariana Méndez Alejandre is on a mission and making film history along the way. She’s currently at work on Inzomnia, which is the first stop-motion animated feature film to be fully produced and shot in Mexico. The film reunites Alejandre with director Luis Téllez, whom she worked with on his stop-motion animated short Viva El Rey. “There’s a wave of Mexican stop-motion animators, especially from my hometown of Guadalajara, that’s been happening for the past eight years or so — and Luis is one of them,” Alejandre says in our interview. “When I saw his vision for [Inzomnia], and when I read the script, I knew that I had to be part of it.”

Inzomnia tells the story of a dystopian world in which the rulers of a city have created the Inzomnia Pill and have mandated its regular consumption by its citizens. This negates their need for sleep and allows them to be functional at all times. However, a major side effect of the pill is memory loss, and, soon, the citizens turn into hollow versions of themselves, moving and working as if on autopilot. The hero of the film is Camila, a ten-year-old girl who, separated from her family, inadvertently escapes Inzomnia. This allows her to sleep and, more importantly, dream, for it is in her dream that she enters the magical Dream World. There, she meets nine-year-old Cesar, and together, they embark on a fantastical journey in search of a way to overthrow the city’s rulers, eradicate Inzomnia, and save Camila’s family and fellow citizens.

As much as it’s a story of family love, friendship, and community, there’s also underlying social and political commentary. “We’re always trying to push stories that start a conversation and sort of reflect what is happening in the world and what we’re going through as a society, especially politically in Mexico and what has been happening in the past few years,” says Alejandre. “Inzomnia is a beautiful children’s adventure, with a more serious commentary and thematics for adults watching as well.”

Guillermo del Toro Gave Luis Téllez Notes on Inzomnia

“I feel like both of our careers [individually] have evolved as our partnership has evolved,” Alejandre says when asked about getting together again with Téllez for Inzomnia after their work on Viva El Rey. Téllez, in fact, won the Ariel Award (Mexico’s Oscar-equivalent) for Best Short Animation in 2019 for Viva El Rey. “We have been able to knock on some doors that we weren’t able to knock on when we first started collaborating.” Indeed, one of those doors was that of the legendary Guillermo del Toro, whose upcoming stop-motion movie Pinocchio shot some of its scenes at the newly opened Taller del Chucho in Guadalajara, the same animation studio Téllez is shooting Inzomnia. What’s more, Téllez served as the Animation Supervisor (2nd Unit) on Pinocchio.

“The notes have been a masterclass in storytelling,” says Alejandre of the insight del Toro shared with the Inzomnia team after seeing some of their footage. “He’s so generous with his time and with the amount of creative input he’s given us. It’s great [because he’s] one of the most talented filmmakers in history, and he’s from our hometown as well.” However, the “double-edged sword,” as Alejandre puts it, of del Toro’s notes is that it has forced the creative team to “go back to the drawing board,” which initially posed problems for the production side of things. “There was already ten percent of Inzomnia shot, and with the notes that he gave, we had to scratch everything.”

Alejandre, of course, is no stranger to pivoting when things don’t go as planned or to advocating for a film’s viability. In addition to her work as a producer, Alejandre is also well experienced in the execution of Oscar campaigns, having previously worked for companies like Focus Features and Warner Bros. In fact, this past awards season, she worked on campaigns for the short films Ala Kachuu – Take and Run and Bestia, both of which ended up scoring Academy Award nominations for Best Live-Action Short Film and Best Animated Short Film, respectively. To top it all off, she served as an executive producer on both of these films as well. “It’s great to have both sides and have my brain do both things. Knowing what the endgame is, what sells, and what plays well — whether it is at festivals or during the awards race — influences the development process of upcoming projects.”

Related: Best Mexican Movies from the 2010s, Ranked

Staying Connected to Mexico’s Film Industry

“I was 12 when I told my parents I was going to move to LA to make TV shows,” Alejandre says of her always wanting to work in the film industry. She recalls being “obsessed with TV shows” and devouring the bonus features on DVDs that explored the production process of her favorites. “I think all my friends thought I was really annoying because, every time we watched something, I was like, ‘Did you know that this is how the camera moved?’ or ‘This is how much it cost.'”

Alejandre now lives in New York, but she spent ten years in LA. She assures that the leap from Mexico to Hollywood didn’t necessarily signal any kind of divorce from her native film industry. “There are more Mexicans in LA than in my hometown, so it was very important to me while I was there to sort of create a bridge between talented Mexicans living in the U.S. and [those] living in Mexico. The goal isn’t to just leave Mexico via the opportunity, work somewhere else, and forget about everything happening here.”

Mexican cinema, per Film School Rejects, saw a Golden Age of film between 1935 and 1969. While modern Mexican cinema took a while to get off the ground after that — for various reasons, like lack of federal support — the 2010s saw what Americas Quarterly calls the country enter its Second Golden Age. Directors like del Toro, Alejandro González Iñárritu, and Alfonso Cuarón each took to the global stage with their films (The Shape of Water, Birdman, and Roma, respectively), and each were met with international acclaim. “Everyone is, I think, more open to watching [international] films because, at the end of the day, it’s all storytelling. It doesn’t have to be a big Hollywood movie to be a great movie that shifts the way you think. It’s all about hooking the audience and making them feel something, whether that’s in Spanish, Chinese, Italian, or English — it’s all the same.”

Inzomnia is expected to release in late 2024.

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