REBEL

REBEL has been in the making for a long time, but I was always afraid of taking the journey. I never felt ready to come to an awareness of what my story meant. I made a promise to myself that I would be completely honest in my first feature. For the past 10 years, I have been working towards visualizing my story.

I grew up in a very machismo-centric and narrow-minded environment. People like me were prayed upon with emotional and psychical violence, so I learned to build an impenetrable exterior. I have always known that I was different but never had the courage to explore that side of me.

This script was developed with the intent to shed the light on the many colors of transgender identity in Latin communities. Most of the details in my film are authentic and may come with a great price. I hope that this journey resonates across all cultures, genders, and sexualities. I will continue to live without definition, in beautiful ambiguity, in a world that is overly defined.

Death brings forth Rebirth: Rebel finds solace in the literary works of Rimbaud, Camus, and video games. Escapism is a significant theme in this movie and Rebel finds freedom in his books, writing, and art. Rebel's story takes place in the early nineties when the internet was in its infancy and our media consumption came from video games and books. Internal expression came to form with a pen and paper.

Rebel has to navigate through a gang-infested neighborhood trying to run from his gender-fluid identity. The relevancy of the nineties is strong in the culture of the current youth and transgender identity seems to be a topic that keeps making headway worldwide.

This short leading to a feature will be my directorial debut as a Latin LGBTQ film Director and my hope is to connect with the audience and share my experiences and visual narratives further breaking down the stereotypes of what it means to be Latin and what it means to be LBGTQ..