Cinema Femme is thrilled to reconnect with director, writer, and actress Gabriela Ortega on the occasion of her latest short film, “Marga en el DF”, which makes its World Premiere in Sundance’s International Fiction Short Films program. Ortega returns to the festival following the acclaimed run of her 2022 short “HUELLA.” The film has also been announced for the Narrative Short Competition at SXSW.
Shot on 16mm Kodak film in Mexico City, “Marga en el DF” is supported by producer and Academy Award nominee Carlos López Estrada (“Blindspotting,” “Raya and the Last Dragon”), with additional backing from Dolby Labs and Antigravity Academy.
In the wake of Selena Quintanilla’s murder in 1995, Marga’s life takes an unexpected turn during a surprise trip to Mexico City while 21 weeks pregnant — setting the stage for a deeply personal reckoning with love, identity, and choice.
I’m also thrilled to be collaborating with you again. I saw the film and absolutely loved it. I thought we could start by talking about the inspiration. Selena — and what happened to her — obviously has a big impact on the story. But what was the initial spark for the film?
For a while now, I’ve been talking a lot in my work about generations — about passing the baton, about the past moving into the present. With this film, I was interested in the present moving into the future.
I think it reflects where I am in my filmmaking right now — and also in my life. I’m very interested in love. Falling in love, being in love… I think behind every story, there’s a love story. When I was writing Marga, I was in a very tender, reflective place. It was cathartic. I wanted to write about when relationships don’t work out — not because someone is good or bad — but simply because we’re human.
So I started asking people around me about their experiences. The film is fiction, of course, but the characters are inspired by people I know. Everything I do comes from a seed of truth. I also like to protect what is fact and what is fiction — it keeps the magic alive.
And through the writing process, I discovered more about myself than I expected. Every character holds a piece of me. But as I kept writing, I also became interested in removing myself — and that’s when the story really took flight.
I became fascinated by the idea of choice — especially pregnancy — outside of the binary of keeping a baby or having an abortion. I was interested in a coming-of-age story.
You don’t usually think of a woman late in pregnancy as “coming of age.” But when I spoke to friends who had children, many described first-time motherhood that way. I’d never thought about it like that before.
We often hear about motherhood as the loss of self — but many women told me they kept their individuality. Society might see them only as mothers, but they were still women, still multifaceted. That really stayed with me.
And personally, I’m at that point in my life where I’m asking: Do I want kids? What would that look like? So writing the film became a way to process those questions.
I love that. Let’s talk about your lead actress — she was incredible. Was she actually pregnant?
No — she wasn’t! (laughs)
Her name is Camila Santana. She’s from Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, where I’m from. We’d been in the same circles for years, and I’d watched her grow as an actor. I really believe she’s part of the future of Dominican cinema.
She has such a distinct presence — and such generosity as a performer. One of my acting teachers used to say great actors have a powerful gaze — they communicate through their eyes. Camila has that. She can be vulnerable, sensual, angry, hurt — all at once. She doesn’t just look at the other characters; she looks through them… and through us as the audience.
She made Marga someone you root for. She’s not a victim — she’s resilient, funny, even a little brash. I loved what she brought to the role.
We did an open casting call. I knew two things were non-negotiable: we had to shoot in Mexico City, and Marga had to be Dominican. Mexico City is such a character in the film, and the Dominican identity — the accent, the rhythm of speech — was essential.
It was actually hard to find Dominican actors locally in Mexico City. Camila emailed us saying she’d just done a workshop there and dreamed of working there. She sent an incredible tape.
In her audition, she made this brilliant choice — she wore a small scarf around her neck that gave her this elegance and poise. It reminded me of the women in my own family. Visually, she pulled me in immediately.
Bringing her to Mexico ended up paralleling the character’s journey — flying from the Dominican Republic into Mexico City — which deepened her performance even more.
She was fantastic. I wanted to ask about Selena as well — why was it important to bring her into the story?
I’ve always been obsessed with Selena. I love her music. She was killed the year I was born, and growing up my mom would always reference that — like there was a “before and after” for Latinos.
I knew I wanted the film set in the ’90s. I didn’t want technology — no phones, no texting, no social media. Emotional experiences were quieter then. People sat with their feelings more.
I was also interested in subtext and silence in this film — more than in my previous work, which leaned into dream realism.
Using Selena helped transport us to that time without a title card. Her death was such a collective moment of grief. I’m not comparing that loss to Marga’s personal story — but collective grief changes us.
I remember feeling that when Kobe Bryant died in Los Angeles — or during the pandemic. Those moments make us reflect on time, mortality, our choices.
So Selena’s death becomes a mirror — an external reflection of what Marga is feeling internally. Here’s this young woman whose life was cut short — and another young woman asking herself: Where is my light going? What am I doing with my life?
That’s so powerful. I’ll ask one last question — what do you hope audiences take away from the fil
That’s always a difficult question.
What excites me most after finishing a film is hearing what people think — because they bring themselves into it. A story can mean one thing to me and something completely different to someone else.
I’m curious how people relate to Marga. How they think about love — how complicated it is. The sacrifices love asks of us. Marriage. Timing.
I’m especially interested in hearing from people in different life stages — married people, divorced people, parents. I’m not any of those things, so I’m working from instinct and observation.
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