Video Interview: Alejandra Márquez Abella – The Good Girls

Following her debut film Semana Santa (also a TIFF selection in 2015), which deals with the absence of a boy’s father, Alejandra Márquez Abella enlists actress Ilsa Salas (Alonso Ruizpalacios’ Museo) to represent snotty side of social status for her sophomore film in The Good Girls (Las niñas bien) – which world premiered in TIFF’s Platform competition. A screenplay based on the text of one Guadalupe Loaeza, this looks at classism with small small mundane hand gestures and through a larger lense of what is a daily ritual of addition and subtraction. What wealth giveth, changes in government taketh away. I sat down with Márquez Abella during TIFF to discuss thow she adapted the material, how she reflects on the era and the visual strategy she employs.