DAYS OF WINTER

FEATURE

Nestor finds himself stuck in his life, he works a night shift as a receptionist in a highway hotel and it seems there is no future ahead in an industrial town north of Mexico, near the border with Texas. His only way to escape seems to go live with his sister in the United States, nevertheless, being the youngest son and the only one who still lives with his mother, Lilia, he finds it hard to leave her right now. Lilia has recently lost her job due to a downsizing, and she is also looking for a sign, for a way to go ahead in life facing old age. After the arrival of his older brother, Pepe, and the desperate intent of his mother to sell a family property, both mother and son seems to understand that they have to detach from the past so both can face their lives ahead.

DIRECTOR- Jaiziel Hernández Máynez

Jaiziel Hernández Máynez is a graduate from the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica in Mexico. Together with Nina Wara Carrasco, he founded the production company Estación Marte Films at the end of 2016, which is currently post-producing the fiction feature called Días de Invierno (2020), Jaiziel’s first feature as a director.

In 2014, Jaiziel shot Up to the Teeth (2018), directed by Alberto Arnaut Estrada, supported by Foprocine in 2016, and by the Canadian Altercinema scholarship in 2015. Recognized as the most-watched documentary in Mexico in 2018, the film documented the case of the Tec de Monterrey students killed by the Mexican army in early 2010. The project was awarded the Camera Justitia prize from Movies That Matter Film Festival in the Netherlands and an Ariel Prize for best feature documentary in Mexico.

Jaiziel also shot the short fiction film Felipe (2009) by Lenz Claure, winner of the García Bross-Studio 5 May prize at the Morelia Film Festival. In the documentary, he shot Florería y Edecanes (2011), filmed with 35mm negative tails in northeastern Mexico and southern Texas. The film has been shown internationally in more than 15 festivals as well as in the documentary tour Ambulante (2012) and the cycle of Mexican Documentary Cinema Summary (2013) curated by Cineteca Nacional of Mexico.

Director Statement

The approach to history is in a direct way and with a realistic tone, seeking to generate intimacy between the spectator and the protagonists. It seeks to create a timelessness, as a memory lost in the characters, using a simple cinematic language, trying to make the time on the screen elapse from the more natural way, and that the rhythm of life of a small rural place, the essence of what it is to live in a small town of northern Mexico near the border with the United States.

The characters in my story are in a moment of change in their lives. The crucial decisions that define their future are only important before taking them, during the process of making the decision. I suggest that the state of not knowing what to do is learning, more than the decision per se. Néstor, the 22-year-old protagonist feels lost in limbo, reflecting a social environment of hopelessness. It seems that life is happening elsewhere, and Nestor wants to go find it.

About the narrative, this is a movie that is looking to find in the subtleties of their dialogues and the background of the subtext a story that touches transcendental themes: attachment, loneliness, nostalgia and yearning. I am interested in these topics because I think that being human is an animal that reflects in his life many elements of the past, which have to do with the way you interact with yourself and others. By this, I mean that for me, the human being is nostalgic for genetics and that relationships with other human beings depends on this fact, of comparisons with the past and Identifications of elements with memories and habits.

I think if it were not for nostalgia, part of our daily life and identity as individuals would not make sense.

CREDITS

Jaiziel Hernández Máynez

Director

Oriana Jimenez Castro

Writer

Jaiziel Hernández Máynez

Writer

Edgar Nito

Producer

Daniel Cabello

Producer

Raymundo Hernández Ramírez

Producer

Jaiziel Hernández Máynez

Producer

Leticia Huijara

Key Cast

“Lilia”

Miguel Narro

Key Cast

“Nestor”

Saidde García Ulloa

Key Cast

“Gaby”

Juan Pablo Ramirez, AMC

Cinematography

Leon Purviance

Music score

Jose Carlos Pesina Siller

Music score

Carlo Ahyllón

Music score