Puerto Rican director Gustavo Ramos Perales’s psychological thriller "Raíces" opens in theaters on November 12, exploring how far a person will go to defend what they consider their own. The film was shot in Puerto Rico after starting as a possible European production, when Spanish screenwriter Roger Delmont and Ramos Perales met while the director was studying film.
The story was adapted to a Caribbean setting and received federal funding from the American Rescue Plan (ARPA). In the 92-minute film, Alex (Marcelo Otaño) and Raquel (Mariangelie Vélez) are siblings who survive a family accident and find refuge in an isolated mountain community whose hospitality soon hides something disturbing, with the forest becoming hard to escape.
The cast includes Puerto Rican actors Jorge Luis Ramos, Yamaris Latorre, Eric Yamil Cruz and José Brocco, alongside Spanish actors Ana Torrent, Mari Carmen Sánchez, Miquel Fernández, Alberto Jiménez and Alberto Lozano. Ramos Perales, director of "El chata" (2018) and "Pies en la arena" (2023), knew some of the Spanish actors from his studies at Madrid’s Séptima Ars school and contacted the others’ agents.
Vélez and Otaño had previously worked together on the series "Súbete a mi moto." Otaño, 17, a student at Cedin school in San Juan, praised the camaraderie on set. Vélez, 35, called playing a teenager challenging but said the team’s support helped.
The film was shot in 21 days, 18 of them rainy, with cave scenes, distances and visa paperwork for the Spanish actors testing the production.