Filmmaker Alina Montero joins Easy Mondays

Born into a filmmaking family (her father is the well-known Mexican director Rafael Montero), Montero grew up in Mexico City, and spent summers in the Southern US, where family and work led her to divide her time among Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Mexico. Culturally speaking, Montero said, “We Mexicans share, rebuild and reinterpret what already exists in our culture to make something new without losing our roots. I inherited my cooking lineage from my grandmother and my film lineage from my father. For me, this game of creation and recreation comes with making hybrid films, where fiction and reality fuse.”

Of her filmmaking style, Montero explained, “I love working with real people and in real places, but I also like to add a warm, humorous, poetic, or fictional twist via the magic of cinema: a beam of light, the perfect smile, a slow push-in, or maybe just a quiet and contemplative moment that culminates in a burst of emotion. As a child, it was not a mystery for me how films were shot fragmented and then knitted in the editing room. But the art of making an audience feel still remains a fascinating enigma to me. There's no potion to achieve that. You must keep learning and experimenting to perfect your craft and make it richer. I'm constantly enhancing what I started learning since I first put a foot on set as a baby.”

“I'm honored and grateful to have this beautiful Cholula project as my entrance to the American market,” Montero concluded, “teaming up with a terrific, progressive, and new-fashioned company such as Easy Mondays.”