• Icaro International Film Festival

    Best International Documentary
  • Doqumenta Querétaro International Film Festival

    Jury Award
  • Morelia International Film Festival

  • AMBULANTE Film Festival

  • Zaragoza International Film Festival

  • Shanghai International Film Festival

Pricing
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Spanish with English subtitles

With Daniel Medina de la Rosa, Philip Glass, Víictor Sánchez, Leo Heiblum, Orly Beigel

A captivating documentary that explores the unexpected bond between Daniel Medina, a traditional Wixárika violinist from the mountains of Jalisco, Mexico, and Philip Glass, one of the most influential composers of our time.

Despite their apparent differences, Daniel and Philip find common ground through music, embarking on a unique collaboration that merges Wixárika tradition with contemporary composition. Through rehearsals and performances in iconic venues across Mexico and New York, the film showcases the fusion of Daniel’s ancestral melodies with the grand piano, marking a groundbreaking moment in musical history.

Despite language barriers, their music becomes a universal language, creating a shared space where their spirits connect and resonate with each other.

Press

“Music in itself is a path. If I want to learn about a culture, the quickest way for me is to start with the music [...] What happened over time is that the music Daniel and I played began to influence us. So when we play together, we listen to each other.” – Philip Glass

“A cinematic journey into indigenous culture.” – Rukmini Raman, The Lawrentian

“Mexico would be very different if there were more films like this.” – Álvaro Cuevas, Milenio

“Rizo...settled on allowing the music to be the protagonist of the story. He mentioned that racism, anti-indigenous sentiment and preservation of culture were all pertinent topics to the Wixárika, but [Rizo] wanted to focus 'on what they had instead of what they did not'.” – Rukmini Raman, The Laurentian

About the Director

Enrique M. Rizo is a filmmaker based in Mexico City with an avid interest in telling stories of human warmth. After spending nearly a decade working with some of Mexico’s best documentary and fiction filmmakers, Enrique grasped the sudden opportunity of directing his first documentary when encountering a story in the midst of a big concert preparation. Apart from his documentary, entitled A Place Called Music, Enrique is developing the television series Monstruos Perfectos in conjunction with Pimienta Films and Fifth Season.

Notes on Film

A Place Called Music is a documentary that on the surface tells a story about an unlikely collaboration between two musicians who hail from very different backgrounds. But, on a deeper level, this story is filled with subjacent layers of meaning and questions that point us towards a personal journey in which we explore the motivations and similarities of our two characters: Daniel Medina, an indigenous musician from the deep mountains of Mexico, and Philip Glass, one of the most prominent contemporary composers from New York City.

The sensibility needed to explore both storylines has been a challenge as neither of our main characters was initially open to taking part in the documentary, so a change was needed in each of them for this film to happen. Daniel lives in a remote community that has never allowed access to a documentary crew, while Glass doesn’t enjoy being under the spotlight at this moment of his life. These limitations set how we portrayed these stories and the cinematic language we used.

Time has been a paramount factor. Philip is incredibly busy with his career and his family, and Daniel’s community is so far away and has so few resources (no electricity for instance) so the scenes we’ve worked with them have been cherry-picked. Since the scenes and our working hours were limited, we decided to aim for a polished and cinematic look. A workflow that normally is too heavy and expensive for independent documentary filmmakers.

I could not insist enough how important music is for this documentary. Even though our aim was not to make a “music documentary” we wanted to allow our audiences to enjoy the music that emerges from our characters and let it play. We want to let our audiences know that music is also a place. It is a place where Philip meets with Daniel and they get to communicate. It is a place where we, as audiences or performers, can go and explore the most abstract shapes of our human emotions.

Lastly, our aim was not only addressing Western audiences but also indigenous audiences in Mexico and around the world. There is resentment in our indigenous communities because we, the mixed race, tend to take their stories and make them ours – and these stories rarely make it back to them. So, this story is also for the Wixárika, we have worked close to their community, and we are proud to say that key members of our crew are of Wixárika descent. We can only hope that this film will inspire younger Wixárika generations, fill them with pride, and make them realize that they can follow their ancestral traditions and still enjoy some of the benefits of city life that they seek. On the other hand, we also hope to stimulate our Western audiences to appreciate the importance of cultural diversity and how varied our human condition can be.