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Running Toward the Desert: Faith, Identity and the Courage to Begin Again - VoyageLA
“A reckoning with identity, faith, masculinity, and the desert landscapes that shaped him.“
Our Lady of the Rock
Jose Soberanes
AGNC
A Note From The Director
When I was 11 years old, my mother took me to a Mexican Pentecostal church in Moreno Valley, California. In that church, God was not metaphorical. He was present, physical and all-knowing. Punishment and miracles were treated as real, immediate possibilities for everyone. People wept, spoke in tongues, fell to the floor and begged for forgiveness as a way of glorifying Him. I played bass on the worship team and spent much of my childhood there, praying out loud in Spanish before services and learning to see the world through a lens where the invisible felt as real as the visible. I learned discipline there. I learned devotion and I also learned fear. I learned that guilt could live in the body and that faith and terror were supposed to exist at the same time. I learned that grief, performance and prayer were supposed to share the same moments, too. Although I am no longer a part of that church or Pentecostalism, my relationship with God has always been shaped by faith, fear, guilt and mysticism. It’s from this place that the image of a man alone, haunted or hunted by something he cannot understand, first began to form within me.
In September of 2025, I had spent $10,000 and gathered a twenty-person crew to shoot the first version of this film, then titled Procopio, in 95-degree desert heat following half a year of work, preparation and rehearsals. When I watched the footage back, I realized it simply wasn’t good enough. It did not matter how many rehearsals we had done or how much equipment I had rented. I was not ready to make this film yet. After the first scene, a daytime sequence of violence and exhaustion, I knew we weren’t going to get the film I wanted us to get. I chose to continue for the next forty hours anyway because I knew there was still something for me to learn out there. I learned that attitude matters more than skill. I learned that acting cannot be imitated, only studied. I learned, again, that making something honest takes time, patience and sacrifice. So we reduced the crew by more than half, changed our lead actors, revised the script and returned to the Mojave Desert. Instead of trying to shoot nine scenes in forty-eight hours, we shot six scenes over six weeks, returning on weekends and weekday nights.
Growing up in places like Perris, Hemet and Sage gave me much to dislike about the desert. The first time I felt a positive connection towards it was in 2021 while directing a documentary titled Homecoming about the synth punk rapper N8NOFACE returning to Tucson, Arizona. Listening to him speak about the beauty, violence and poverty of where he came from made me realize our upbringings were not that different and if he could admire and utilize his landscape, I could do the same. The desert became the place where that image could live in.
For several years, I carried the image of this film inside my soul without feeling capable of making it. One afternoon, in April of 2025, sitting in a tree with my best friend Thùy Lan after her ACL surgery, I understood why.
This film was made by a very small group of people who believed in me enough to keep returning to the desert. Marcos Croskey committed to finding images in the terrain that resisted us. Brandon Camarena grew into a confidence that, for me, feels as meaningful as the film itself. Kevin Romero reminded me that filmmaking can be done because you simply love filmmaking. Paola Rosario and Luis Cadiz brought a kindness and resilience to the process that shaped the work in ways I did not expect. And Thùy Lan, everyone’s favorite person on set for too many reasons to list here.
Daisy Sanchez and Moya Gotham were the first to engage with my ideas on making a film in 2018. Adrian Aguirre, Wesley Flores and Sage Bliss-Rios Mace were part of the earliest conversations about this film, back in 2021. Lealani, Lola Jamin, Miky Melati, Gisella Espinoza, Leon Zhang and Raquel Suwak contributed to writing that expanded the thematic world of this film beyond what I could articulate on my own. And to my mother, who introduced me to resilience, faith and community, thank you.
As I write this, the film is still being completed.
Thank you so much for your support and consideration.
Anticipated Festival Run
October 8–18, 2026
SITGES - International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia
Sitges, Spain
October 16–25, 2026
FICM – Festival Internacional de Cine de Morelia
Morelia, Michoacán, Mexico
October 30 - November 8, 2026
Morbido Fest
Mexico City, Mexico
Elevated Genre
January 2027
Slamdance Film Festival
Park City, Utah, USA
Independent Cinema
February 2027
FICCI – Festival Internacional de Cine de Cartagena de Indias
Cartagena, Colombia
Latin American Cinema
April 17–25, 2027
FICG – Festival Internacional de Cine en Guadalajara
Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico
International Cinema
April 24–May 4, 2027
San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM)
San Francisco, California, USA
Art House
May 2027
Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival
Los Angeles, California, USA
Latino Cinema
July 2027
Fantasia International Film Festival
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
International Cinema