We Are What We Are

A middle-aged man dies in the street, leaving his widow and three children destitute. The devastated family is confronted not only with his loss but with a terrible challenge: how to survive. For they are cannibals. They have always existed on a diet of human flesh consumed in bloody ritual ceremonies... and the victims have always been provided by the father. Now that he is gone, who will hunt? Who will lead them? How will they sate their horrific hunger? The task falls to the eldest son, Alfredo, a teenage misfit who seems far from ready to accept the challenge... But without human meat the family will die.

Shocking, bloody and deeply moving, the Mexican film WE ARE WHAT WE ARE is a remarkable reinvention of the horror genre - a visceral and powerfully emotional portrait of a family bound by a terrible secret and driven by monstrous appetites.

OFFICIAL SELECTION 2010 NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL AND WINNER OF THE BEST PICTURE AWARD IN THE "NEXT WAVE" SPOTLIGHT COMPETITION AT FANTASTIC FEST!

"BEST POSTER OF THE YEAR CANDIDATE!" - Mr. Disgusting, BLOODY DISGUSTING

“Like zombie auteur George Romero at his best, Grau locks his sights on his social commentary of choice and goes after it with the zeal of a 19-year-old cannibal girl sinking an ax into the skull of her next meal.” (Ian Buckwalter, NPR)

J. HOBERMAN OF THE VILLAGE VOICE SAYS, "HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. The tale of a disoriented cannibal family trying to survive in the lower depths of Mexico City, Jorge Michel Grau’s WE ARE WHAT WE ARE is a darkly comic social allegory as well as an atmospheric little genre flick. This promising first feature is nearly as apt to use the power of suggestion as to ladle up the gore; triumphantly creepy, and just arty enough to have secured a slot in last year’s New York Film Festival."

INDIEWIRE'S ERIC KOHN: "Grau smartly eschews satire for emotional legitimacy. Rather than a subversive treat, WE ARE WHAT WE ARE aims for a darkly realistic note and finds it. Grau lets the symbolic value of cannibalism stand without neglecting the believable drama at its core. A-."

"Strikingly original in technique, it rewrites the horror genre with a premise that is outrageously novel: a cannibal family hidden in the heart of the capital." - Paul Julian Smith, SIGHT & SOUND

"Rife with black humor and horror, WE ARE WHAT WE ARE is not just an allegory of one town's corruption, but also a portrait of endemic collapse to sink one's teeth into." - Nick Schager, VILLAGE VOICE

"Jorge Michel Grau's debut feature WE ARE WHAT WE ARE may just be the best film I have seen all year. Much like LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, what we have here is a film built on a horror premise, but which is as much, if not more, a family drama and teen coming of age story. Beautifully shot and constructed, Grau builds a truly unique animal here, a film that is entirely its own." - Todd Brown, TWITCH

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

During my stay at CCC (Centro de capacitación Cinematografica) I tended, subconsciously or intuitively, to look for my own self in a specific topic - all of my exercises were guided by this particular search. Violence permeated my work, my speech, and my narration. I always looked for the things I wanted to say, but it was never enough. I never developed its most important implication -its direct relation with family... the family that generates violence and is affected by it. Now, in my first feature, you can see them, sense them, taste the family disintegration, urban violence, social depredation, the fight among minorities to survive and be noticed. But above all, the possibility of improvement - taking the only chance to escape violence. And also the possibility of ridding myself of it completely... of living it in flesh and blood without letting it harm me. My aim is to decode my surroundings. To try to describe myself through this story; to discover my ambitions, my motivations, and my values. To find through the screen the tools with which to build my discourse.

-Jorge Michel Grau

FILM FESTIVALS ~
CANNES INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2010
NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL 2010
FANTASTIC FEST 2010 – WINNER: BEST PICTURE