As far back as Emilio Torres can remember, he wanted to be a filmmaker.
It started in 2005 when his parents took him to see “Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.” Torres recalls something “clicking” in his head as he watched the Star Wars prequel trilogy come to a conclusion. Then came the DVD box set of the film that his parents gifted to him on his birthday. It was full of behind-the-scenes, making-of documentaries, and once Torres saw that there were people whose lives revolved around making movies, he was hooked.
Torres has been pursuing the dream of filmmaking ever since, and is now an NYU film school graduate with several short films under his belt. His latest, “The Ladder,” recently premiered at multiple film festivals across the country.
One such festival — the Oregon Film Festival — recently honored Ketchikan resident actor Keith Smith with its “Best Actor” award for his starring performance in “The Ladder.”
The short film follows Smith as Arthur, an aging Alaska fisherman who gets an opportunity to restart his life in a 21-year-old body. According to Torres, the film is about old age and the trials that come with it.
“The film explores themes of growing old, finding purpose in life, how to deal with grief, and changing family dynamics,” Torres said via email. “I hope audiences can view how one character tackles these challenges amidst a mysterious science fiction circumstance and reflect on their own approach to these themes. “The Ladder” is really a short film based around the choice of whether to accept the life you’ve lived, or run after the potential of what could be if you had more time.
Torres said he wouldn’t reveal the choice made by the film’s main character.
“But after you see the film, I’d invite you to consider what you would do if given the choice, and what that means for how you can navigate your life now,” he said
He said the idea for the film is something he’s been interested in for a while, and that he always envisioned Smith in the lead role.
“My whole life, I've kind of been fascinated with the idea of restarting your life,” Torres said. “So those kinds of ideas melded together into this piece. I landed on the character of Arthur because I thought of Keith Smith in this film and just kind of his voice and his rhythm working really well with sort of the tone and aesthetic that I was going for. But also how the concept itself could be explored in a lot of different ways.”
The writer/director said his latest film has been positively received by audiences and has won several awards across the handful of festivals it's currently playing. “The Ladder” has also generated “immense intrigue” in Ketchikan as a filming location.
Torres hopes that “The Ladder” will serve as a proof-of-concept to potential investors. He also hopes to one day produce a feature-length film or TV series based on the idea. He explained that the film festival circuit is all about getting exposure.
“The benefit of doing the film festival process is that official selections and awards help build credibility for your film and hopefully get you and your project notoriety,” Torres said. “However, it’s also like playing the lottery, and submitting to festivals is very expensive. Submission fees range from $15-95, with most being in the $35-80 range. This is just the cost to be considered for a selection. With a project like “The Ladder,” we have submitted to dozens and unfortunately received a lot of rejections. Thankfully we can afford the cost to submit, thanks to the generosity of our crowdfund supporters.”
Torres said the application process can be disheartening at times, but he still has a great love for film festivals, which he sees as “keeping indie film alive.” He added that he’s still hoping to hear back on more applications.
“The Ladder” was shot over a four-day period in July 2021. The crew consisted of a mixture of Torres’ local friends, and peers from film school. Several locals, including Katherine Tatsuda, Dave Kiffer and Connor Wodehouse, have cameo appearances in the film.
Torres said it was “rewarding and fun to come back home after concluding film school at NYU to make art with the place that made me.”
The film was also the first that Torres had a real budget to work with. He raised the money on seedandspark.com, a crowdfunding website tailored specifically to filmmakers. Torres expected to receive modest donations from a few key supporters, but ended up with a lot more. The campaign’s total goal was $15,000, and raised $7,500 in the first day alone. In total, the Ketchikan community helped Torres raise $21,500 to fund “The Ladder,” something Torres said he wasn’t expecting. The money allowed Torres to pay his entire cast and crew, which he hadn't been able to do before and was “very proud” to be able to do so.
In addition to the financial support, Torres acknowledged the overwhelming support the Ketchikan community continued to give him and his crew during their shoot.
“I think if anyone else tried to make ‘The Ladder’ in Ketchikan, they would need a lot more money than $20,000,” Torres said. “Just because even with that budget, we still had a lot of support and good graces from people in Ketchikan who made things happen for us. We had some meals donated, we had people who offered rides, who offered to give us props and things of that nature. It was a mixture of all these donations from people who supported the film monetarily, but also all these people who did all kinds of donations by helping us out in intangible ways.”
Torres also credits the community of Ketchikan for fostering his love of the arts, and considers the community instrumental in helping him pursue his goal of being a filmmaker.
“I owe all of my creative self to the amazing arts community in Ketchikan,” Torres said. “Thanks to the support for arts and opportunities to be creative growing up in Ketchikan, I felt inspired and supported to pursue my dreams. That led me to learning more about theater and film in high school and then eventually graduating from one of the best film schools in the world. I have made several cinematic projects and I am still very young in my career. I owe that to Ketchikan.”
He described “The Ladder” as a “love letter” to his hometown.
Torres is proud of all of his short films, but hopes to graduate to commercial, narrative feature film and TV directing in the future.
He cites filmmakers like Paul Thomas Anderson, Pedro Almodóvar, Ingmar Bergman and Robert Rodriguez as being influential in his journey to become a filmmaker. Torres particularly enjoys the work of Rodriguez because he does things his own way, and doesn’t let small problems hinder his creativity.
Torres is still finding the kinds of stories he wants to tell, and is working on developing his personal style as a filmmaker as well.
“I'd say like for me, I've kind of tried to express my style before and it's interesting, because I think I may be too young in my career to try to encapsulate my style,” Torres said. “There's types of movies that I know I want to make that I just haven't because it wasn’t the right time.”
He referenced films like “Star Wars” and “Scott Pilgrim vs the World” as some of his favorites that inform his sense of enjoyable filmmaking.
Torres described making “The Ladder” in Ketchikan as “the best experience of my life.” One of the most memorable things to come from his journey as a filmmaker was screening the film at the Gross Alaska Theaters Ketchikan Coliseum.
“We [screened the film] at the Gross Alaska Theaters and I grew up going to that theater,” Torres said. “And so there was something really surreal about renting out my childhood theater and showing this movie to people that had supported me growing up and how cathartic that was, and just being proud that I could offer that to the community.”
The Ketchikan-raised filmmaker hopes to hold another screening for the community once his film has completed its festival run.
*This article was originally published in the Ketchikan Daily News*
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