Secuestro Express - Jonathan Jakubowicz interview (Part 1)
Interview by Rob Carnevale
IN PART one of a special interview, Secuestro Express director Jonathan Jakubowicz talks about the personal experience that inspired the film, as well as the impact it has had on both a country in turmoil and himself as a person and filmmaker…
Q. I hear that Secuestro Express was born out of personal experience. Can you tell us a bit about that?
A. Partially, yes. It was based on different experiences. One is mine but I spoke to many kidnap victims and kidnappers and created the script from real life tales that I gathered. My kidnapping was very much less violent and traumatic than the one portrayed in the movie. But I did have a gun to my head for 45 minutes and they left us in the middle of the highway at midnight in our underwear and socks. So it was definitely traumatic but not as bad as in the movie.
Q. Can you tell us a little bit about the reality of life in Caracas?
A. The reality is that a lot of my friends have been kidnapped and even if they haven’t, they’ve been victims of a crime in one way or another. In many ways, the reason I decided to do this film is because this has become a normal thing and we have to stop it from being normal. We have to speak out and do something about it – and that’s what we’re trying to do with the film, create awareness. I think, in many ways, that’s why the film became so successful in Venezuela because people from both sides identify with it. And that happens rarely.
Q. It’s the highest-grossing film in Venezeula, isn’t it? It has surpassed the likes of Titanic and The Passion of the Christ?
A. Yeah, ever. It’s pretty crazy. A lot of people went to see it from the ghettos that have never been to a movie theatre. They would go and knock on the door of my actors and ask them: “How do you go to a movie theatre?” It was in many ways because the pirates decided not to sell the DVDs on the black market because they supported the message within the movie. That forced people to go to the theatre because they usually get their pirate DVDs from the ghetto and watch it that way. If they wanted to see Secuestro, they were told to go and watch it. So that’s how it became this cultural phenomenon that everyone identified with. I just feel blessed that we were actually able to get the message across and communicate with both sides.
Q. And that in turn helped it to get the international distribution because this is the first film from Venezuela to have achieved that…
A. It’s very hard to understand and process all this success. I just take it as flattering that what we’re saying is important and the world wants to hear. We are in a very special moment for humanity and we have to deal with the issues that are affecting humanity. As a filmmaker you have such a massive audience and you need to own the responsibility of addressing it because it’s part of the responsibility of having the privilege to reach them. I just tried my best to speak out for the people who don’t usually speak out in my culture. The fact that the entire world got my message is just very exciting and very flattering. I feel blessed.
Q. How old were you when you were kidnapped?
A. I was 22. Now I’m 28, so that was six years ago.
Q. How soon did you realise you wanted to make a film about it?
A. It was much later. When I was kidnapped, the reaction was actually anger. You just want revenge. But it was only when I left the country and started to see how society works in Europe and the United States that I started to see what was different in Venezuela and what can cause these kinds of things to happen. I realised that the reason is very simple and there was no way you could possibly go on with a society in which 80% of the people live in poverty and 20% live in extreme wealth. We needed to do something about that and the only way to communicate to the entire society that we have to do something about it is to say things in a truthful way. Even though it might hurt, we have to deal with this. There’s simply no going back. If we continue with the level of violence that we’ve had in the past three decades, where are we going to stop? Where are we going to be in three decades?
We had 14,000 deaths last year in Venezuela from street crime. Those are numbers from a war, yet we don’t have a war. We have street crime, we have disparity, we have misery, we have corruption in the police but there’s a limit to how much we can accept that. So let’s really be honest and deal with the fact that this is affecting each and every one of us because nobody is living under human conditions any more. It doesn’t matter how rich you are – if you have to live with three bodyguards, electric fences and drive a bulletproof car, you’re not living under human conditions. That’s the message – that we need to do something; each and every one of us has to devote themselves in full to do something about this because we cannot continue going this way.
Q. Now that the awareness has been raised – both nationally and internationally – is there any evidence of something being done?
A. It has created a huge level of awareness. But it’s been tricky because the government is so much against this film and really doesn’t want the message to get across because they benefit from class hatred. So it’s tricky and it’s hard but we’re still pushing and the film’s message is still there. It’s now out on DVD and we have created events that mix both sides because we believe that the beginning of the process is communication between both sides. Sometimes we throw concerts or parties and make it in a neutral space so that we can invite people from all sides of society. There’s a process we’re trying to create of loosening the class hatred because that’s the beginning. It’s a very complicated problem but communication has to be the start.
Read the second part of this interview
Read our review of the film