Andrés Clariond Rangel

Andrés Clariond Rangel (LDE ’02) majored in Law at UDEM and his passion for cinema led him to venture into one of the most inaccessible industries in Mexico and present HILDA, his first feature film.

“I majored in Law because I was interested in the humanities and public life, but I always had creative and literary inclinations. When I was in the first semesters of my undergraduate degree program, the Monterrey Cineteca (film archive projection room) opened. There, I met filmmakers from Mexico City and I realized that working in filmmaking was not so far-fetched,” said Andrés.

Then, he decided to take courses on script writing, and cinematic appreciation and production. In the summers, he traveled abroad to pursue Cinematography courses, and when he graduated he started an MFA program at the University of Columbia, New York.

My first challenge was getting people to take me seriously, something difficult to accomplish when you work in an unusual profession like film direction. I overcame that challenge by taking it with due seriousness: I prepared myself, and worked minor jobs, working to break ground. After that, the biggest challenge was developing the project for my first film,” Andrés commented about his beginnings.

In order to get his first full-length film, HILDA, off the ground, he had to face multiple problems like doubts that he would be able to take the script to a safe harbor. The government denied him cinema production funds on four occasions, and actors and other people he sought out for key roles in the production turned down the project because they considered it too ambitious for a debuting director.

Nevertheless, he managed to overcome all adversities and his film premiered in August 2014, in 120 movie theaters in Mexico, with excellent reviews.

About other projects he has had in his career, Andrés mentioned “El Poder de la Silla”, which he co-authored with Diego Osorno and in which they interviewed the last four governors of Nuevo León. This documentary was shown in universities, public squares, the Senate of the Republic, and the portal of El Norte. In total, it was watched by about 12 thousand viewers.

Besides his career as a film director, Andrés Clariond Rangel is an editorialist with Grupo Reforma.

To conclude, Andrés told us about his greatest satisfactions: “Doing what I like and not having to do a job that is not for me, having studied at one of the best universities in the world, succeeding in making a film, being an editorialist at El Norte, one of the leading newspapers in the country. And in my personal life, being a husband and a dad.”