Mexican Director Dany SAADIA talks about the film that's set to launch him to international stardom, currently bringing him serious attention from film critics at many of the major film festivals this year. The film is "3:19" and the fuzz over it is mostly due to the unique and intriguing plot involving Love, Death and Mathematics. And the clever insertion of animation into the feature.

At 3:19's world premiere, at the Santa Barbara Films Festival early this year, Saadia was praised for his attention to detail that created an 'exquisite mood' not only for the dramatic narrative but in the animated segments as well.

This offbeat romantic drama is Saadia's first feature film. It was adapted from his award-winning short film "Genesis 3:19."

(Original Interview in Spanish) What is the story about?
3:19 is a story about love, friendship and death and the powerful effect that death has chanced upon all of the characters. If anyone of us thought of all our relationships, our friendships and everything else that happens, in a way that we become fully aware, we will be surprised at what we find out.

Why did you choose this story?
I am passionate about Coincidences, Symmetries, and Repetitions... When we think of somebody and a second later we find that somebody on the street... When two cell phones ring at the same time...When two plane crashes happen at the same time... All these give the impression that there is a kind of invisible force that affects our lives.

The writer Milan Kundera, who has a strong presence in 3:19 he was amazing telling the story of how the love attracts the cancer.

The idea of Accidents and how it affects a group of young friends is what 3:19 is about.

Your film has animation, what was the reason for that?
Film directors must take advantage of all the technological advances that help to tell a story. It's always been like this, and we (films directors) have seen 3D animation as an innovative tool that we could not ignore.

We made the animation in Canada under the Art Direction of a talented Mexican named Jose Luis Monsoon.

If you pay attention, you can verify that the effects are made with innumerable fragments of textures, paper carpet, wood and waves ~ it is a a pure artisan process that, the spectator can verify.

What is the animation about?
It is about a mathematician (Evarist Galois) and a biologist (Paul Kemmerer) whose lives help us understand accidents. The life of the two characters is exciting, romantic and filled with chances and fatalities.

Math? Movies? Two very different things?
These are the same. The cinema reproduces the reality, the maths describes the reality. To create a film is to enrich the reality with a mathematical theorem. And I can say that, at a certain moment in my life I realized it is far better to do film than Math.

The subjects that you propose, don't you think they are quite complex for the public?
I would like to rid of that idea completely. First, 3:19 has different layers like an onion. You can stay with the first layer and enjoy a simple story or you can peel the onion and find a greater depth in terms of ideas and feelings. Second, which is most important, we have to trust in the intelligence of the public and not to insult them (as what's often done). To trust the spectators and viewers allows us to request to them that they trust us. We are not going to let them down.

A Mexican director, but the cast is not Mexican at all and the film was made in Spain. Why?
The animation was made in Canada, the animated titles of credit in Holland; the movie was filmed in Spain. The Director and Scriptwriter is Mexican and the post-production was made in Mexico. Why? Because talent is universal, because the world is more and more interconnected and that makes things more and more cosmopolitan. That's the way we see it. Talent does not end with borders. Our talented artists and Mexican technicians complement their abilities with those equivalent to them in other countries. In this day and age, if you want to tell a universal story, you cannot make a film 100% Mexican or 100% Spanish or whatever other country. And that is something that the new generation of young Mexican people know very well and understand.

In your opinion, what is it in Mexican cinema that deserves great attention?
We (Mexicans) don't have trust in ourselves. The Mexican productions are segmented and many young talented directors find it difficult to find support for their work.

Our trends revolve around very commercial productions (desired in American movies). We must find a balance proposing interesting, at the same time commercial films like 3:19.

3:19 is based on a Cortometraje?
(Note: Cortometraje Short film; Largometraje Feature film)
Not exactly. The script for the largometraje (feature film) was already written. I decided that for the best way to pitch the idea, it was necessary to consider production indications, the originality of the proposal and my capacities as director.

There are therefore affinities with the largometraje (feature film), but after the integration of the animations, we realized that we have fully exceeded the original idea.