Filmmaker Francisco Castañeda initially intended his short film “‘I love you’ is unnecessary” to be a rom-com about how he met his wife. Then his father died, and everything shifted.
“The film became an exercise of mourning and how to keep your artistic pursuits alive after losing someone so close to you,” Castañeda says. “My father was the first person who inspired me to make movies and this film was a way to honor him and his believing in me.”
The El Paso filmmaker created the ambitious film — which moves strikingly through time and genres — in collaboration with Tower Productions, a very prolific independent El Paso film production company celebrating its 10th year. “‘I love you’ is unnecessary” played Friday as part of the local film block at the El Paso Film Festival.
On Thursday, during a panel on local screenwriters, he explained that he starts a script by thinking of images. For “‘I love you’ is unnecessary,” he thought of an image of a woman with a bloody face smoking a cigarette, and then worked backwards to try to understand what happened.
In our Q&A, below, Castañeda told us about visualizing memory, choosing a long title, and the photogenic flexibility of El Paso.
Francisco Castańeda on “‘I love you’ is unnecessary”
MovieMaker: You do such a cool job of crossing genres and visual approaches within this short.
Francisco Castañeda: I felt like every memory I’ve ever had, had a distinct visual style to it. The style depended on the emotions surrounding the memory; dark or light, passionate or empty. When translating that visual language to film, I chose to lean into that, using genres in the form of scenes to describe those emotions.
MovieMaker: A long title like this plants a flag. Like some of the long titles of Smiths songs. How did you know this was the right title?
Francisco Castañeda: I once heard someone say, that saying “I love you,” is unnecessary when you really mean it. Your actions do truly speak louder than words. When writing this film, I feel like we find our main character in a place where he feels the need to constantly verbally explain himself, meanwhile his actions show someone who is stuck.
It was true for him, and it was true of myself at one point in time. In a way, the title reflects what I want my work to slowly become. It’s an emotional “show, don’t tell.”
MovieMaker: This is such a cool showcase for El Paso film locations, though the film never specifies where it takes place. It feels like New York at times, and like Paris or Barcelona at others. It’s so dreamy. Can you talk about your locations?
Francisco Castañeda: One of the great strengths of El Paso is that you have a very diverse ecosystem and architectural influence. How that benefits a film is that you can really get picky with what exactly you want for each scene. In the case of this film, I wanted it to feel timeless and placeless. El Paso ended up being the perfect background.
MovieMaker: How did your relationships with Tower Productions help you make this?
Francisco Castañeda: I have a longtime friendship with Carlos De La Torre, as we have read all of each other’s scripts since the beginning of our own, personal filmmaking journeys. Carlos, the president of Tower Productions, always showed an interest in helping produce my work. “’I love you’ is unnecessary” became the perfect project for that. Everyone at Tower was very supportive of the project and they wanted to create something great, which ultimately attracted me to working with them.
MovieMaker: How did you become a filmmaker?
Francisco Castañeda: I have always enjoyed telling stories since a very young age, starting with living room theater presentations I’d come up with as a toddler in my old home for my family in Mexico. As I grew older, I began studying animation and a professor told me I had a good eye, and to pursue cinematography. That led me to direct my first short film and I have been hooked ever since.
Here are more details on the El Paso Film Festival, one of our 50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee. And you can read more of our film festival coverage here.
Main image: “‘i love you’ is unecessary”
