Private Project

Dalia (2022)

A heartbroken creative-writing student struggles with writer’s block. When her characters rebel against her, she travels to the world of fantasy to unknowingly confront her alter ego, heal the wounds of her past, and recover her voice.

  • Itzin Alpizar
    Director
  • Itzin Alpizar
    Writer
  • Claudia Pizano
    Producer
  • Gabriela Ordiales
    Key Cast
    "Gaby"
  • Aladria Brown
    Key Cast
    "Dalia"
  • Christopher Colbourn
    Key Cast
    "Damian"
  • Malcolm Curry
    Key Cast
    "Adrian"
  • Trevor Mentions
    Director of Photography
  • Fang Hua Shiu
    Audio, Editing & effects
  • Catharina Agudo
    Audio, Editing & effects
  • Tyler Twist
    Production Design
  • Shani Zuberi
    Production Design
  • Itzin Alpizar
    Production Design
  • Joseph Hall
    Soundtrack
  • Project Type:
    Short, Student
  • Genres:
    Magical realism, drama, romance
  • Runtime:
    12 minutes 51 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    December 13, 2022
  • Production Budget:
    1,800 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    Yes - California State University Sacramento
  • J Street Film Festival
    Sacramento
    United States
    December 15, 2022
    Senior Project Premiere
Director Biography - Itzin Alpizar

Itzin Alpizar is a multimedia creator and filmmaker known for using a wide range of mediums to share and explore human experiences and imaginative stories. A journey of global experience herself, Itzin was born in Mexico, raised in Costa Rica, and has lived in Sacramento, California for over a decade while integrating stories from her personal experiences as a woman from a Latin-American family and her multicultural perspectives.

She studied acting and cultural promotion at the Conservatorio de Castella (Castella’s Conservatory) and the Taller Nacional de Teatro ( National Theatre Academy) in Costa Rica. Later, she pursued associate degrees in Journalism, Psychology, and Social Sciences at American River College, culminating in a bachelor's degree in Film and Digital Video Production at California State University Sacramento (Stingers up!)

Itzin has written, directed, and edited projects across many mediums and short films including writing and directing the short film Dalia (2022), which is the second stage of her experimental production project DALIA, with the goal of it ultimately becoming a feature-length film.

Itzin's goal is to share stories that blur the limits of reality, showing the internal and external worlds in which we all live, fostering self-reflection, positive outlooks, and autonomous choices in the viewers' lives. She hopes to increase the representation of female Latin-American voices with unorthodox experiences, and artistic self-development.

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Director Statement

Dalia was born from personal struggles with artistic perfectionism, and from hypothetical conversations I have had myself with characters throughout the process of developing their stories. This little meta-story of a character confronting her creator’s narrative has grown from a small assignment of five pages to a developing journey of five-minute projects reaching a 13-minute short film.

Dalia is the story of a creation rebelling against its creator. Gaby, a writing student struggles from past emotional experiences, leading to writer’s block affecting Dalia, her alter ego, a character created to be the superhero Gaby is not. After losing the voice of her words, Gaby has to travel to the internal void to confront a rebelling Dalia, heal her wounds, and recover her voice before losing all sense of herself.

This story, influenced by the tradition of Latin-American magical realism and the European surrealistic movement, will be a feature-length film or even a series. This story still has much more to tell, until then, I won’t stop listening to Dalia whisper her story into my ears.