Your film brings together two seemingly distant subjects: astronomy and nostalgia. What first made you connect the two?

Pedro: Daniela had this visual idea involving an old hotel and nostalgia, while I had some notes about astronomy and how everything is constantly changing. We started talking about making a short film, and somehow, both ideas seemed to work really well together.

I think we were both interested in the passage of time, just from very different perspectives. It was interesting to see how something as vast as the universe could connect with something as personal as our memories.

At just two minutes, your film is incredibly concise. How do you decide what to show, what to leave unsaid, and when a film is finished?

Daniela: We actually had a lot more material that didn’t make it into the final cut. We felt the idea worked better in a very condensed form, and that two minutes was enough to communicate what we wanted the audience to see and feel.

We also liked the idea of leaving some space for viewers to make their own connections rather than explaining everything. Since this was our first experiment working together, we wanted to keep things simple and short without overcomplicating the process.

You directed this film together. How does your creative partnership work, and what does each of you bring to the process?

Pedro: We share a lot of references and have similar tastes, but we also have our differences, which I think makes things interesting. We tend to approach ideas from slightly different perspectives, and that usually helps us come up with something neither of us would have thought of alone.

In this case, most of the visual aesthetic and art direction came from Daniela, while I worked on the script and editing. But throughout the process, we were constantly sharing ideas, discussing details, and making decisions together.

What’s the most surprising or unlikely place you’ve ever found creative inspiration?

Pedro: Probably in everyday routines and seemingly boring things. We spend so much of our lives doing ordinary things, and sometimes that’s when we notice small details we might otherwise overlook.

We also tend to overthink random things, like something we see on the street or a conversation we overhear, until they eventually turn into something bigger. I think there’s a lot of interesting material hidden in everyday life if you pay enough attention.

Where’s your favourite place to watch a movie? Do you have a cinema or screening experience that holds a special place in your heart?

Daniela: Here in San José, Costa Rica, we have a few options beyond commercial cinemas. Very close to our apartment, there’s a cinema called Cine Magaly that we visit quite often. It’s a special place for us because we’ve watched so many different films there over the years.

We were lucky enough to have this short film screened there during the shnit Film Festival, so it was really special to see our own work on that screen. It felt a little surreal to be sitting in a cinema we know so well and suddenly watching something we had made ourselves.

Is there an artist, filmmaker or musician you love whose work you wish more people knew about?

(P/D) We’ve been listening a lot to a Spanish singer called Maitequiero (@maitequiero), as well as F.A.V. y Tino (@favytino), a Costa Rican cumbia duo. We’re also big fans of Irene Calderón’s paintings (@aiiiire). 

We’ve also been very lucky to collaborate with Lucia Howell (@luvhowel) whose work we really admire. These are all artists whose work we love and would be excited for more people to discover. 

A slightly impossible question: if you could send one film into space for an alien civilization to discover, which film would you choose, and why?

Daniela: I would choose Perfect Days by Wim Wenders. I think the routines and quiet beauty of this film are a great example of how even the simplest human life can be magical. It finds something extraordinary in the most ordinary moments, and I think that would be a beautiful thing to share with an alien civilization.

If this interview had closing credits, what song or piece of music would you choose to play over them, and why?

Daniela: Since the short film is quite nostalgic, and we’ve been listening to this album a lot lately, I’d probably choose “Lost Boys” by Phoebe Bridgers. There’s something about the atmosphere of the music that feels connected to the film, particularly that mixture of nostalgia, melancholy, and the passage of time. I think it would make a nice ending to the interview.