It's a story of hope and sacrifice in which men who can't be gay in Mexico, and can't be undocumented in the U.S., find themselves trading one sort of hiding for another. The film captured the festival's NEXT Audience Award, as well as an Innovator Award for its director. It seems appropriate that a film that sprang from those conversations also won the hearts of Sundance festival goers when it premiered there in 2020. Years into their friendship, they told the filmmaker their harrowing back story in even greater depth at the 2012 edition of the Sundance Festival. Filmmaker Heidi Ewing told NPR's Morning Edition, "For me, there's a lot of nuance in the film because even though you see the conflict at times verging on violent between fathers and their gay sons, you also see tenderness, confusion and ignorance that's driving the anger of the fathers."Įwing first met the real Iván and Gerardo 15 years ago. The film isn't simply an indictment of the homophobia Ivan and Gerardo faced but also a nuanced portrait of what drives people to leave home and family at great personal cost. Then working backwards from that documentary footage, she scripted their backstory, and found actors to play them in their early 20s, and also in childhood when they dealt with fathers who were differently oppressive. Over the course of several years, Ewing filmed Iván and Gerardo going about their lives. It's an innovative blend of Iván and Gerardo's real-life story told through documentary footage and a swooning fictionalized drama with actors. I Carry You with Me is the first narrative feature from documentary filmmaker Heidi Ewing. border where things may be better and they can begin again. It's only when Iván (Armando Espitia) meets and falls in love with Gerardo (Christian Vázquez), that his story takes a fateful turn. Waiting for a relationship that could work in a Mexican society that forces gay men underground. Waiting to cook, rather than wash dishes at the restaurant where his boss was forever urging him to be patient. He'd been waiting for the mother of his 5-year-old to let him take his son Ricky for a playdate. It's a past he remembers as filled with waiting. He looks to be in his early 50s, and is musing about a time some 30 years earlier in Mexico that the film is about to recreate.
When we meet Iván on a New York subway platform at the outset of I Carry You with Me, he's lost in thought. Christian Vázquez as Gerardo and Armando Espitia as Iván in I Carry You with Me.Īlejandro Lopez Pineda/Sony Pictures Classics