In this opening shot, the storyline skips forward to him saying his goodbyes and getting ready to leave Mexico for the US. Here, he is holding the MP3 player his friends left for him as a reminder of their friendship.
This scene takes us back to show how happy and in his element he was whenever he was with his friends.
This is the first time he makes a deeper conversation with someone who even cared enough to ask him. She is the Columbian sex worker he goes back to later, when he needs a place to sleep.
Another flashback, where Ulises is with his clique, Los Terkos (The Stubborn), and they feel like they’re on top of the world.
This is him with his clique taking a commemorative picture with the political banner they stole and painted over. This was overshadowing for the was politics and the foreboding drug war would tear them apart.
Another overshadowing and first shot of a time lapse. Ulises and his friends are running past brand new political campaign signage on their way to a Kolombianos dance meet.
In this shot, his American friend starts to change her style to imitate and relate to Ulises better.
Ulises is explaining the social structure among the dance groups, their turfs, and the way they work
Ulises shows her videos of himself dancing as a child and more recent captures.
Later, he returns to the library by himself seemingly to recharge himself with the energy his friends leave him online and to catch up with their statuses online.
He also recharged the MP3 player they gave him while he was there.
This is Ulises on one of his last sullen and lonely nights in New York.
Second shot to visualize time lapse. Here, Ulises walks by the now-tagged campaign signage, as opposed to when he ran by in the first shot with his friends.
Set in 2011, when the Mexican drug war was overshadowing a political race and tensions between cartels were high, the movie I’m No Longer Here, follows the story of.a 17-year-old boy named Ulises. In his hometown of Monterrey, Mexico, Ulises is the head of a niche clique in Mexico that lives by the way of “Kolombianos.” The term refers to a subgroup of Mexican people that like to listen to Colombian Cumbrian at a slowed pace and dress in ‘cholo’ style (baggy clothes, bandanas, sneakers, baseball jerseys), along with more specific style choices such as hair.
Ulises’ life consisted of trying to stay on good terms with his blood family because they don’t support his lifestyle. He would escape to his chosen family and to the identity they associated with in order to feel comfort and support. Since his style was similar to that of gang affiliations and a gang his oldest brother (in jail) founded, Ulises had been mistakenly targeted by a cartel because of his relations. This mistake forces Ulises to flee to the US. His mom calls in all the favors she can to get her son across the border because he’d be killed on sight and might accidentally endanger his family even more. Before he is sent off, he says goodbye to his friends and family. One of his friends and clique members presents him with the MP3 player they had all planned on buying together; a token to keep them with him in spirit.
After being smuggled across the US border under the seat of a van, Ulises is set up in Queens as per the smuggler’s recommendations. He lives with contract/day-workers at the beginning of his experience in New York. He ends up falling into conflict with his fellow migrants because they didn’t like his style and his music taste. They felt he didn’t aport to his stay, since he spoke no English, barely knew the trade, and kept to himself. While looking for work with the other men, he remembered an offer to clean up a roof that the other men had rejected, so he went and took it up after leaving their apartment. There he started to sneak into the old man’s rooftop shed to sleep in at night. He gets caught by the man’s granddaughter, but he slowly forms a friendship with the girl that was born out of her curiosity.
After seeing her curiosity, he is further encouraged to share who he is and dance in the NYC subway, but he is chased away by a homeless man on his first day and stopped. He struggles to feel like himself in this new place he has no other option but to live in. He goes to a party with his new friend, but he gets drunk and calls his mother saying that he wants to go home. He falls out with his new friend because he ditched her at the party, and she stops trying to contact him. He had nowhere else to go, so he slept on the couch of a Columbian sex worker he had met in his time with the men, and, since this was out of sympathy, she tells him it is a one-time favor. Later, he roams the NYC streets and ends up being deported when he is found sleeping outside.
Ulises is sent back to his home, but he doesn’t go back to his family. Instead, he visits his old friends only to find that they are no longer on the paths they’d laid together. Ulises found himself in the place where he meant the most to himself once again… alone.
Identity, homesickness, sacrifice, tragic flaw, loneliness
Ulises has such a strong connection to his social identity, so when he is forced to be away from it, time passes by and he feels like he loses everything and everyone that truly saw him.
Currently, I have collages and stop-motion in mind.