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| Volume 11, No. 49 |
September 1-7, 2010 |
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| | ‘Rebels’: Juarez film on location in El Paso | | By Fabiola de Goríbar | | 
A can-do, do-it-yourself spirit has motivated an award-winning independent film company from Juárez to shoot its first feature film in El Paso.
Autumn Leave Films is shooting key scenes of “Rebels,” a fantasy film about orphans caught up in a celestial battle, in co-production with Intelia Films. Locations include such familiar local spots as the Union Plaza, Sunset Grocery in Sunset Heights, McKinney Wrecking, St. Clement’s Parish and many El Paso streets and neighborhood corners.
“It was mainly because of its architecture, its unique combination between antique and contemporary,” says Julio Abad, the film’s screenwriter, director and producer. “Living across the border, our main challenge is logistics, transportation and the different infrastructure of this country, but it’s definitely worth it.”
Abad, 24, started his career in filmmaking while attending middle school in Juárez, with a group of friends. Since then the group has evolved into a solid independent film company.
So far, Autumn Leave Films has produced 19 projects and has won a number of awards, including second place as Best Short Film in the Binational Film Festival for “Novatada” (2009) and Best Short Film in the Chihuahua International Film Festival for “Los Aristócratas”(2008). The prestige earned them funding for “Rebels” from Mexico’s Culture and Arts National Committee.
The Spanish-language “Rebels” – its Spanish title is “Los Hijos del Fin Del Mundo,” or “The Sons of the End of the World” – is a fantasy about a group of orphans escaping from a fallen angel and the warriors who must save them as a final battle brews between Heaven and Hell.
“I wrote the story with the idea of giving a twist to the fantasy genre,” Abad says. “I wanted to tell a fantasy story in a very crude way, with characters very close to reality. Personally, I write the characters for actors that inspire me, or people I would like to work with. This screenplay was written for my friends, for this production company, for us to enjoy it.”
The film includes 19 actors, supported by a 15-person crew, working – at the moment – for free.
“They are the ones making this dream possible,” Abad says. “This is an Autumn Leave film, which consists of a group of filmmakers, actors, art people … all of us from Juárez. If something is missing, someone gets it, or someone knows someone who has it.”
The movie has created opportunities for new actors, including young people like 14-year-old Ángel Benítez, who plays one of the main characters, an orphan named Oliver.
“This is a story about friendship and union,” Benítez says. “All the characters of this movie achieve their goals through these forces. They keep on going, without fearing the consequences.”
Benítez had his first role as a background actor in Paramount Pictures’ “Backyard.” In the set of that movie he met the Autumn Leave Films crew, which worked as the local crew for that film. Julio Abad asked him then to participate in the short film “Los Aristócratas,” and since then, he has been a regular actor in Autumn Leave Films.
“My character Oliver meets four other orphans in the streets, who become his family,” Benítez says. “Our mission is to get to a train – our salvation – but first we have to go through a lot in the streets.”
Benítez and the other beginner actors will get the chance to learn from a skilled actor, Joaquín Cosío, who was invited to participate in this movie with the role of Lucio, the head of the warriors. Cosío has participated in well-known films such as “Matando Cabos,” “Rudo y Cursi” and “Quantum of Solace.”
Autumn Leave and Intelia Films expect to finish filming “Rebels” this March and release it by the end of the year.
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