Like a commando leader, Jianna Maarten directs the cast and crew of Sin Cielo — a jarring film exploring the danger of what happens when young women are treated as disposable items and the men around them are cuckolded into silence.
Sin Cielo, written and directed by Jianna Maarten, takes an intimate look at teen love in a Mexican border town that is disrupted when the girl is abducted and her disappearance rocks the small town to its core. The film came from several true stories and accounts the director collected while visiting and staying in colonias along the border. In a time of the #metoo or #timesup movement where more and more girls are speaking up about mistreatment and keeping their bodies safe, Sin Cielo reminds us that there are a lot of women out there who are in a fight for their lives, and they’re not winning.
When I asked Jianna what drove her to make this film, she revealed a disturbing reality:
“We read the statistics, ‘7 women a day go missing in Mexico’ or Asia’s staggering trafficking numbers but statistics are numbers, it’s different when we attach names, faces, stories, lives to those numbers. The reality is brown and black girls are disproportionately targeted and undervalued. We can say what we want but that’s still true.”
Her films have strong female narratives, expressing both complex issues and common fears:
- Dinner With Ana – A woman trapped in a marriage and expectations of providing her husband a child,
- Number 33 – young girls traversing a brutal sometimes violent urban landscape with the hopes of something more,
- The Billboard Queen – a faded pin up star tries desperately to regain her former glory even if that means denying a very large part of herself.
Not surprisingly, a female-led film resulted in a more female cast and a crew where fifty percent are women in key positions.
Making independent films is always a challenge, there is never enough money, time, or resources but the team behind Sin Cielo accomplished quite a lot with their limitation.
Throughout its festival run, Sin Cielo won (7) awards including the Grand Jury Award for Best Short Screenplay at the Ivy Film Festival and Outstanding Achievement Award for Best Short Film at Calcutta International Cult Film Festival. After winning Short Film Award for Narrative at Seattle International Film Festival, Sin Cielo is entering the For Your Consideration phase of its run (i.e., Academy Awards, etc.)
Jianna is part of a national movement — women speaking frankly and in the face of convention and finding a more supportive network than ever before. Ever since she directed her first pilot project for TV, her focus was story-telling from a female-centric perspective with multi-dimensional characters with complicated lives, cultural intersectionality and unresolved personal issues. During her rising Directorial career, she has collaborated with gifted actors, cinematographers, sound engineers, and editors to portray the most excruciatingly beautiful dysfunction.
I met Jianna several years ago in my creative writing class at Columbia University. When I first saw her, she had the ‘college student’ look — bulging backpack, iced coffee in one hand smart phone in the other, crinkled bohemian clothes, and hair pulled into a bun. But as I got to know her, I realized this was merely the surface belying an aspirational, visionary woman born of a multi-national family with a singular skill in story-telling. So it is no surprise that Jianna is attracted to places and people that may on the surface seem foreign but upon closer inspection feel as familiar as her own memories.
As an alumna of the American Film Institute, Jianna prefers films that are more elusive. “I just liked the idea…it was complicated and I liked the idea that it was complicated and subtle,” Jianna told an audience at the 2014 Garden State Film Festival after viewing her film, Dinner With Ana. This mantra was proven when viewers received her trademark ‘punch-in-the-gut’ ending. A nerve quivering off camera scream with no dialogue and only her actors’ facial expressions to explain what just happened. A secret truth revealed that changes everyone involved.
“The idea [was] of a couple obviously with a marriage that was falling apart and a love triangle,” she continued. “That a woman [Renata] was in a position where she felt she had to have a baby…that this character just was terrified of that next step, so much so that she would just damage her body. From a female perspective I thought that was an interesting one, one that was a little bit uncomfortable. I like uncomfortable things.”
In Number 33 uncomfortable is putting it mildly as we watch two young girls grapple with adolescence, sexuality, and the limitations of their socioeconomic station. The sex scenes graphically acknowledge the bluntness of physical and emotional intimacy.
There is a courageous integrity – both complicated and subtle like her films — that Jianna taps into and that quality makes her even more fascinating than any movie she has directed.
NYC 6th Borough 