Fantastic Fest Interview: Director Juan Felipe Zuleta on Aliens and Hope
Photo by Jon Cospito, Courtesy of Eva Nosidam Productions
For a film about aliens, Unidentified Objects is deeply human. Peter (Matthew August Jeffers) and Winona (Sarah Hay) are neighbors, but they’re polar opposite strangers. Where Peter is gloomy and depressed, Winona is a ray of sunshine. Their lives collide when Winona asks Peter for a favor: she’d like to borrow his car to travel across Canada to the site of an alien abduction. Together, the two embark on a life-changing road trip.
Director Juan Felipe Zuleta sat down with Beyond the Cinerama Dome to discuss the development process, the importance of representation, and the necessity of hope.
Zuleta conceptualized the plot of Unidentified Objects with his long-time collaborator, Leland Frankel. From start to finish, the writing process took three weeks. “This was the screenplay that came the fastest to us in some way,” Zuleta explains. “It almost, like, fell from the sky. I know it sounds crazy.”
The film’s title also came along fairly early in the process which is unusual for Zuleta. He’s currently working on projects that have been in development for years, but are still without a name. Unidentified Objects works on multiple levels. The phrase has ties to aliens and the concept of UFOs which speaks to the film’s science fiction elements. It’s a genre that Zuleta loves. He’s intrigued by science fiction’s ability to create more freedom in storytelling. Particularly, Zuleta touches on “the way science fiction is used as a tool. Like from the school of Guillermo del Toro…Science fiction as a medium to really reflect on our times. And how it allows you to bend certain things.”
Unidentified Objects Film, LLC
More than the extraterrestrial and fantastical elements, Unidentified Objects also speaks to the main characters’ struggles with fitting in. “We wanted to explore identity through the perspective of what it means to be an alien,” Zuleta says. “Being an unidentified object. Being like somebody who doesn’t belong. [Aliens] just fit perfectly.”
Peter and Winona are characters who represent communities that are rarely not a chance to tell their stories on the big screen. Winona is a sex worker and Peter is a little person. For Zuleta, it was crucial to show these characters experiencing what he calls, “explosive joy.”
“If you can get that character who’s suffering from grief, from depression, from isolation, from all of these things,” he says, “and you can put him on a track where, in the process, they discover something about themselves. And they discover that self-acceptance, that self-love, that’s where the joy comes from.”
Unidentified Objects Film, LLC
In a lesser film, the relationship between the film’s central characters would have turned romantic, but that was never in Zuleta’s plan. “Always platonic. I’m sorry, but I’m just like a little bit fed up with romantic stories to a certain degree. I love romance, but I feel like romance sometimes overtakes everything else behind it and I wanted to make it about an unexpected friendship…I think the world needs a little bit more than that. More than just someone you want to fuck, y’know?” laughs Zuleta.
Ultimately, Unidentified Objects is a beacon of hope. “I wanted this movie to give a little bit of hope for those people out there who are lonely and didn’t find a place in this universe,” Zuleta says. “To know that there are other people like them out there.”
Listen to the full interview with director Juan Felipe Zuleta below and check out Unidentified Objects during Fantastic Fest!
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