Mexico in the late 1980s. The eight-year-old Roberta watches her family of seven women fight to save their home from mounting debt. It is a struggle that will reshape how she sees herself and those around her. This is the premise of Vanilla (Vainilla), the feature directorial debut by writer-director Mayra Hermosillo, an actress you may know from Netflix’s Narcos: Mexico or Amat Escalante’s Lost in the Night.
World premiering Wednesday, Sept. 3, in the Giornate degli Autori (Venice Days) lineup, a sidebar of the Venice International Film Festival, the ensemble cast includes Aurora Dávila, María Castellá, Natalia Plascencia, Paloma Petra, Rosy Rojas, Fernanda Baca and Lola Ochoa.
The cinematography is courtesy of Jessica Villamil, with Sonia Sánchez Carrasco handling editing. The producers are Stacy Perskie (Bardo, Spectre), Karla Luna Cantú, Andrea Porras Madero and Paloma Petra. Bendita Film Sales is handling world sales.
Based on personal experiences and set in a nontraditional, all-female, multigenerational household, Vanilla is about “the difficult process of breaking free from the limitations of inherited social expectations of women,” highlights a description of the movie. As such, it is “a deeply sensitive exploration of identity, family, and the experience of womanhood.”
The filmmaker tapped into her personal and professional experience for Vanilla. “I’ve had the privilege of learning from filmmakers whose work encouraged me to find my own voice as a writer and director,” says Hermosillo. “That journey led me to Vanilla, a story rooted in my childhood in northern Mexico. I grew up in a nontraditional home, and although it felt normal to me, the conservative community around us didn’t see it that way.”
She continues: “The film follows Roberta, a young girl shaped by this environment, who believes she can somehow fix her family’s situation. It’s a story about growing up too soon, about how shame and love intertwine, and how identity is formed when you live outside the norm.”
Vanilla
Courtesy of Venice Days
Concludes Hermosillo: “Rather than criticize tradition, Vanilla asks what it means to belong, and how we judge lives different from our own. Making this film in my hometown is my way of honoring where I come from, while opening the door for other stories that explore family, gender and resilience in places often overlooked by cinema.”
The trailer for Vanilla that THR can exclusively present below hints at how the movie features all sorts, including signs of financial challenges, a contest featuring a beach holiday as a prize, smiles, dancing, the beach, ice cream.
