I was lucky enough to screen Christopher Zalla’s Radical prior to Sundance to prepare for this interview. While watching it, it was abundantly clear that Zalla, Eugenio Derbez, and the rest of the team made something special. Sure enough, Radical not only received a rave response out of its premiere screening in Park City, but it also went on to win the Festival Favorite Award.

Inspired by the true story covered in producer Joshua Davis’s Wired article, Radical tells the tale of Sergio Juarez, a teacher in Matamoros, Mexico who’s had enough of the traditional education system. He opts to take a job teaching sixth grade at Jose Urbina Lopez Elementary, a school with some of the worst-performing students in Mexico. How does Sergio plan to change that? By ditching the required curriculum and doing everything in his power to spark curiosity and discover what they want to learn.

While in Park City celebrating the film’s big debut at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, Zalla, Davis, producer Ben Odell, Derbez, and two of the film’s young stars, Jennifer Trejo and Mia Fernanda Solis, all visited the Collider Studio presented by Saratoga Spring Water to discuss their experience bringing this hugely inspiring true story to screen.

In his director’s statement, Zalla describes the opportunity to make Radical as a “rare second chance.” Zalla explains that he found himself burnt out “after finding myself too-deep into too many projects that didn’t align with my tastes or goals.” On top of that, personal challenges led Zalla to make the decision to leave his life in New York City behind and move his family to Guatemala. A choice many deemed “career suicide.”

Clearly Zalla found his way back to the industry, and he did so with an exceptional new feature. Given his success in prioritizing himself and his family without leaving filmmaking behind for good, I asked him for the advice he’d give to others out there who feel the need to get away, perhaps from filmmaking hubs like New York and Los Angeles, but fear the door closing behind them completely if they put personal needs first. Here’s what he said:

“That's a great question. And I think it also applies to filmmakers that are here right now at Sundance, especially with their first movie, their short, whatever it may be. I did all the wrong things after winning the Grand Jury Prize, which is to say that -- I think the key thing is, the industry is brutal. It can be unforgiving, but on some level it's irrelevant. What we have to do as filmmakers is to do us. Do you. What is it that called you to this? What is the ‘got you’ there, and it's very easy. There are very real logistics, like you need to feed your family, which certainly was something that I experienced. But gradually, it took me further and further off track and I had to have a kind of self reckoning moment, which was like, ‘Wait a minute, I need to time out.’ It’s very similar to the story of Sergio. I need to do this differently. I need to take another approach. And for me that approach was, I need to just remove myself. I moved to Guatemala where I've been living now for eight years. It's paradise. I love it. But it was a place and a space where I could come back, find myself again, incubate my own things. It was literally in that context that these guys called me with this project.”

Even though Zalla calls Radical his second chance, Odell insists that’s not an accurate descriptor because, in his mind, Zalla was the only option to direct the film.

“I think he describes it as second chance. I describe it as a great opportunity for us because I had produced his first movie and I knew what he was capable of. And we’d been talking for years trying to find the right project. But I think this was a movie that both wanted to honor the genre of the teacher movie, subvert it and also create a tension between that and a very naturalistic story … And he'd been living in Guatemala, and he had been dealing with the education system there. There were so many reasons, but he was just the only choice for both me and Eugenio.”

Derbez may be one of Mexico’s most talented and celebrated actors, with that acclaim reaching every corner of the world at this point, but that doesn’t mean he jumped into the role of Sergio with peak confidence. In fact, he dubs Radical his most challenging project yet. He explained:

“I feel related to Sergio and to this story because when we were preparing this movie, my background is always as a comedian. I've been doing comedy my entire life. When Ben brought this project to me, it was a little bit scary. I knew that I had to change my method, and when I was talking to Chris about the character, I wanted to change my face, my hair, everything, right? And he was like, ‘No, no! It has to be you.’ ... Because I've been doing comedy I wanted to really change, and he was like, ‘No, change from your inside.’ So what I did was internal work trying to find Sergio inside of me. It was very, very complicated to me. Probably this is the most challenging movie that I've done because it's completely out of my comfort zone.”

You only need to see a small handful of interviews with Derbez to realize he’s an incredibly humble individual so in an effort to encourage him to celebrate how talented he truly is, I asked for a time when even he had to stop and say, ‘I’m proud of myself for doing that.’ Here’s what he went with:

“It happened with this movie. I saw a previous cut, but not the final cut, so when I was watching the movie -- and probably this is the first time I liked what I did, especially because I'm always criticizing myself so bad. Every movie that I do, I don't like myself. I don't feel I'm funny enough. [Laughs] But right now because it's a different genre, I liked it. I think that's the first time I say that.”

Odell jumped in to confirm we did indeed witness a miracle by seeing Derbez celebrate his work like that. “I work with him all the time. We do a lot of stuff together. That's a miracle.” Odell added, “He never says [it]. So even to admit it out loud is a miracle.”

Odell had some collaborator compliments of his own to share. He noted:

“I think everybody brought their A game to this. I always feel like it starts with the director and, honestly, there's not an image in this movie, a choice of color, anything that wasn't really thoroughly thought through by Chris, and I think when you set that tone and you set that bar that high, everybody else rises to the occasion. Eugenio always rises to the occasion. But all these kids, they felt how much a good teacher who cares will get kids to learn because they care about what they're doing. When a director is so thorough and passionate, it just sets a bar and that's why Chris is Chris and that's why we're all here.”

Looking for more on the making of Radical? We’ve got just that for you in the full video interview at the top of this article!

Special thanks to our 2023 partners at Sundance including presenting partner Saratoga Spring Water and supporting partners Marbl Toronto, EMFACE, Sommsation, Hendrick’s Gin, Stella Artois, mou, and the all-electric vehicle, Fisker Ocean.