Set against the backdrop of a massive student strike, Alonso Ruizpalacios’ coming-of-age film Güeros is a playful and lyrical love letter to his native Mexico City. Embarking on a road trip in search of a fabled folk singer, two brothers, Sombra and Tomás, discover the city and themselves. During a press junket in New York, Mr. Ruizpalacios shared the inspiration behind his debut feature, a film that is all about contrast in a city of myriad contradictions.

Güero (pronounced gwero) is an informal term, meaning something like “dude”; it also has an interesting etymology...

Yeah, it’s a slang word that is used in the whole country, but very much so in Mexico City. It originally referred to people of lighter skin. It’s sort of gone beyond that, and now everybody calls each other güero. It’s an interesting term because it comes from colonial Mexico. It’s what they used to call the Spaniards. The word "huero" means unfertilized egg or pale, sickly man. It gives a sense of something not quite right. It’s an interesting word that I used for the title because it puts in the mind the idea of contrast.

Is that why you shot in black and white?

That’s one of the reasons we used black and white. To be honest, the first reason was purely impulse. When I wrote the script, I saw it in black and white. Then I had to justify it to my producers. Shooting in black and white is considered commercial suicide. (Laughs) We had to come up with clever answers.

The film is also inspired by events that happened in 1999 [the strike at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México], but I didn’t want that to be a straitjacket. I didn’t want this historic frame to weigh down on us. Shooting in black and white helped us incorporate different aspects in the image. For example, at some point you see the kids using smartphones. These anachronisms fit in more loosely in black and white. They integrated more. This timelessness was important to me for the film.

Why did you choose the backdrop of the strike at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México to tell the story?

For somebody my age in Mexico, the strike was a landmark. You couldn’t have been a student at that time and not have been affected by it in some way, even if you weren’t at the National University, or if you were still in high school. The University’s importance is hard to explain to people outside of the country. I haven’t found an equivalent to such an important institution in many ways, economically and academically. It’s free, it’s inclusive and one of the best universities in Mexico, if not the best.

The fact that it came to a complete stop for almost a year meant a lot of things. Some people were unemployed for that long. Some went to different schools, while others stayed drifting in the middle. It had never been talked about in film before. When I started writing Güeros, it wasn’t originally about the strike. I was writing about these kids who didn’t go to school. They were slackers. But I was writing it while I myself was going through a long period of unemployment after finishing school. I wrote it as a sort of occupational therapy. (Laughs) That angst-ridden limbo took me back to the days of the strike, the way that we felt when it started and went on for many, many months. People just drifted in this limbo.

Were the consequences of the strike felt throughout the city?

Yeah, definitely. It was a strange, strange time. Very interesting in many ways socially and politically. I was more interested in the strike from the social point of view than the political, in what it did to people internally. How it broke relationships and brought people together. There were many kids that were created during the strike. (Laughs) Someone should make a documentary about “strike babies”.

What was it like to train with the legendary Polish-born Mexican theater, opera and film director Ludwik Margules?

He’s not too well-known outside of Mexico, but he was one of the big names in theater. He was this really smart, tough Polish guy. Really fat, like a Falstaff. Very charming. I’m really proud of having studied with him. I think he taught me the ropes of fiction, truth in acting and discipline. He was a really disciplined guy. I was lucky because he died shortly after I left his school. I was one of the last generations that he taught. As a directing teacher, Margules was amazing because that was his real passion. He loved forming directors.

How did theater training influence you as a filmmaker?

I’ve always thought theater is like a ritual. It has mystique. I don’t want to sound too New Age, but film is much more practical. Coming from theater and being in touch with this respect for fiction and the actor’s work being the center of whatever fiction is being made informed my filmmaking. I love working with actors, it’s part of the process I love the most. Some of my director friends that are better technically are afraid of actors and don’t like talking to them too much. They hide behind their cameras. I’m the opposite, I like spending time with with them and working scenes out and improvising. There was a big dialogue between me and the actors on this film.

You encourage improvisation?

Totally, completely. It was always one of our rules. We made the script as tight as we could make it. Rewrote it many times, but once we had it I wanted to leave it behind and have this mix of improv and really strictly set pieces. I invested the little money we had for the film on time, rather than having lots of fancy equipment. We basically had our camera and a couple of rigs, but we spent the money on having a longer period of shooting. I wanted that because I knew we were going to improvise onset. We went to all these different locations in Mexico City. I needed to know that if I turned on the camera and something cool happened, or unexpected or funny, we could go shoot that and figure out how to fit it into the story later. There were lots of moments of discovery during the filming process.

How long did it take to shoot?

Almost nine weeks, which for a Mexican first feature is a long time. Most of my friends have made theirs in like, five weeks. I was lucky, but there was a price to pay. We had to make due with very little equipment, and we didn’t get paid until much later.

Güeros has many literary elements. What writers or books have inspired you?

There’s too many, but definitely one book that has inspired most of the filmmakers I’ve met is Catcher in the Rye. I read it again before shooting Güeros. Another book I read around that time was by Roberto Bolaño called The Savage Detectives. It’s fantastic, really strange and unexpected. It’s funny and beautiful and poetic. Moby Dick is probably my favorite book of all time. It’s a major undertaking to read, but it’s worth it. I mostly read the classics because of my theater background. Shakespeare is someone I’ve read closely, over and over, and I come back to. I’m always thinking about him and the way he solved things. Chekhov, I really like. Lots of theater, contemporary theater.

Mexican theater?

Mexican theater, as well. There’s a lot of really cool contemporary Mexican writers.

What would you like to adapt to the screen?

Moby Dick! (Laughs) I’m probably never going to do it, but that’s my fantasy. And at the same time, no. I don’t think you can make a film out of something that great and big and well-known.

The film deals with people who are stuck in their lives and anxious or unable to move. Once they do move, great things happen to them. How do you get through these moments of inertia?

That is where the movie sprang from. I was in that particular rut. It was writing about it that got me out of it. I remember it was a time when I had a lot of panic attacks, and the only thing that seemed to calm them down aside from drinking or smoking was writing about it, finding out what was going on and making a story out of that. Now it’s easier because I have a two-year-old son. You can’t sit still.

What is your advice to aspiring filmmakers?

You don’t have to go to film school to be a filmmaker. I didn’t go. Most of my favorite directors didn’t. If you are in film school, that’s fine, too -- good luck. People have so many fears and think that they need to be validated by an institution, or that an institution holds the secrets to filmmaking. That’s bullshit. I really have found that art has no rules. In film schools, they always teach you rules. Some are useful, of course. Some are just shortcuts, which you would’ve found anyway.

You have to find your voice. There is not one way of being a director. I think that’s something I discovered with Margules. He was always very emphatic about finding your own voice. That’s a long process, you won’t find it in one film. But you have to try to find out what kind of director you are. Some people think that being a director, you have to be a tyrant or a boss, or pretend to be in charge. I’ve met really great directors who are very shy. They’re not imposing. They don’t have big, stereotypical director personalities. I don’t think there is one way of doing things.

In a pivotal scene in the movie, Sombra tells the folk singer Epigmenio Cruz that he finally understands “the feeling of getting to know what lies behind things.” Can you talk more about that feeling?

(Laughs) A part of that comes from a Tom Waits song called “That Feel”. He says, “Well, there’s one thing you can’t lose. It’s that feel.” He never says what that feel is, but in a way when you listen to that song, you understand what he’s talking about. When I was writing that monologue, that line just came into my head. It’s what poetry does. There is a lot of respect for poetry in Güeros. There are literally poems inside the film. I’m a big fan of poetry, Emily Dickinson, William Blake, Dylan Thomas.

Was there a real life figure that inspired Epigmenio Cruz?

Bob Dylan is an artist that I’ve talked to a lot in my mind and listened to over and over. He’s accompanied me in different parts of my life, as he has in many people’s lives. One of my closest friends who was really the one to hook me onto Dylan said that he has a song for every situation involving a woman.

[English theater and film director] Peter Brook is another. I did have a similar encounter with him that Sombra has with Epigmenio Cruz. Peter Brook is a much more dignified, less drunk man. (Laughs) I’d read his books, and I admired him. He was a big figure in my head. I went to see one of his plays in Paris and waited after the show to meet him. I waited for hours under the rain outside the theater. I had this whole speech in my head ready to deliver. When he finally came out, I forgot my whole text and said, “Uh, uh, thank you for your plays.” He just turned around and looked at me weird and said, “Thank you.” And he went off in his cab. It was a very disappointing meeting.

You didn’t learn anything?

(Laughs) Nothing at all.