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The story of "RICE" is an attempt to reconcile my own past through the meeting between the two protagonists, Helen and Sebastian. The male protagonist was written from a blurred memory of my experiences as a child during a sudden influx of foreign students into the school I attended, due to a war breaking between Argentina and the UK. The visceral feeling of alienation I experienced from an early age, through the school I attended, is held within the main male character’s trauma and released when he meets the female protagonist, just like I had my own feelings of marginalization released when I met all those foreign students who joined my old British School, for it was then that I felt seen for the first time. Helen, from a different perspective, is a written fantasy of how my mother’s life could have been, had she not been institutionalized at age 15 and stifled by culture, her sister’s envy and the barbaric mental health practices of their time. Unlike my mother, whose differences, talents, dreams and aliveness were “treated” and medicated out of her in a bid to make others more comfortable in her intense presence, Helen was written to take charge of her life and to value, create, and maintain enough space to nurture the parts of herself that are singled out as “different” by others. Helen was written to understand these parts, integrate them and finally be at peace with herself. This, in connection with Sebastian’s role, allowed me to observe my own demons and maybe even resolve some.

As a species rapidly disconnecting from or degrading the very things that make all life sustainable: sunlight, soil quality, the quality of our air, our oceans, our woods, our crops and the food that we put into our bodies, there are few issues as important to everyone on the planet, whether we are aware of it or not. I personally acknowledge a direct relationship between the quality of all that we take in and our health. This love story is my humble contribution to simply highlight these relationships and remind people that be it essential human connections or our food, we are all individually responsible and in charge of figuring out what fuel is best.

Director Alex Vargas