At the Sundance Festival, Frida Kahlo tells her own story in a documentary

The documentary Fridadirected by the Peruvian Carla Gutierrezoffers the late Mexican surrealist painter the opportunity to tell her own story by assessing her most personal writings.

“I am interested give her the microphone so she can share her most intimate experiences (…). We didn’t want to concentrate in all the details of her life, but in what she felt“, Gutierrez revealed EFE from the Sundance Film Festival.

The filmmaker He met Kahlo more than twenty years ago while studying at university.when he had just arrived in the United States as an immigrant.

Kahlo’s painting titled Self-portrait on the border between Mexico and the United States resonated with his own experiences in the North American country and since He devoted himself to knowing all his works.

“I saw that painting of Frida where she stands between the United States and Mexico I felt like I was reflected in her. I was a new immigrant and I did not have a welcoming experience in the United States and I missed my country, Peru, a lot,” he noted.

Gutiérrez assures this in every painting he saw the artist found a piece of herself and decided to make the film based on those experiences and her personal connection which is now part of the American documentary competition in this independent film competition.

The filmmaker, best known for her work as an editor, and her production team have dedicated themselves to this see all the writings left by Kahlo and published in various collectionsand with his words and descriptions from his diaries created the documentary’s story.

Told with a voice in it outThe film presents authentic photos and videos of the painter and combines them with an animation that deconstructs and animates the works by Kahlo to amplify the woman’s feelings while creating new metaphors about her experiences.

“I think everyone We are looking for honest ways to express ourselves, but we are still very afraid to do so; It’s not easy to talk about our pain and our emotional problems. She expressed them all in a bold way, with lots of color,” said Gutiérrez.

During the documentary, Kahlo talks about her life, her relationship with her parents, the tragic accident that led her to painthis first signs of rebellion in his youth, the excessive love towards her husband – also the painter Diego Rivera – their political convictions and their ‘living feelings’.

From your point of view, The film helps to rethink the true importance of the painter, whose image abounds souvenirs and that in some cases merely reduced to an object.

“Frida is already a brand, and I think so too The great thing about the documentary is that it brings us back to who Frida is, why she is who she is.and to kind of leave all the marketing stuff behind and remember why it’s so iconic,” says Hernández Stumpfhauser.

The film will be released on Amazon Prime Video on March 14.