Rituales
With the northern border virtually closed, thousands of migrants shelter in Mexico City, uncertain whether to stay or return home. Amid dancing, karaoke, and shared routines, two teenage friends live out their final days together before parting ways. Rituales is a portrait of those who hold each other up along the uncertain road.
Almost every migrant I spoke with at the shelter had no plans on becoming a migrant. No one plans to leave everything behind. No one plans to end up sleeping in a shelter because there is no better option. All of them had risked their life to be there, and yet, my focus was never on the dangers or the traumas they had been through, but on the compassion that quietly holds a place like this together.
We filmed in two shelters in Iztapalapa, Mexico City. We never expected to enter a world where Afghans, Africans, Asians, and Latin Americans live side by side, trying to make sense of whatever few opportunities they have. Traveling north to the US was not an option for most of them. Staying in Mexico didn't offer much either. The question of what comes next hung over everything.
With Rituales, I tried to stay close to the humanity behind that uncertainty: the support migrants offer each other, and the rituals they carry with them wherever they go. How do you rebuild a life when you belong nowhere?
Post-production will be finished in August 2026. We hope to premiere at festivals in the last quarter of the year.
