Interview: ‘Tigers Can Be Seen in the Rain’ Director Oscar Ruiz Navia on the Short Film as Elegy

Tigers Can Be Seen in the Rain is a languid exploration of temporal space. Using ambient film taken on the streets of urban Montreal — alongside voice messages and images from what seems to be a life well-lived — Colombian writer-director Oscar Ruiz Navia catalogues the internal journey of mending a grieving heart.

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The film was created after the death of his younger sister and feels like a masterclass in the succinct. At a delicious 15 minutes long, the film effectively immerses the viewer in the slow-moving slog of grief. Competing in NYFF’s Currents Program 1: Below The Surface, Tigers Can Be Seen in the Rain is an entry into the canon of Navia’s creative projects wherein familial wounds are sewn up and sutured, just waiting for the opportunity to be witnessed. The viewer feels as though they walk alongside Navia in his grief — not to hold his hand, but to bear witness to the breadth of a life shared with someone who now only exists in memory.

I had the great fortune of speaking with Navia about the short film as a medium for an elegy, the excavation of memory while processing the freshness of grief, and how he himself can see the “tigers in the rain.”

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Oscar Ruiz Navia: In 2023, after a few years of fighting an illness, my younger sister and partner in my production company (Contravía Films), Ana María Ruiz Navia (Anita), left this world. I moved to Montreal, looking to start a new chapter in my personal and professional life. When I first got to this new place, I felt it necessary to make a film about the pain I was living internally. I started filming in places near my house: alleyways, bridges, train tracks. I felt the absence of this loved one, and at the same time, I had the desire to make a film to honor her memory. I recovered our voice messages on WhatsApp and planted myself in work on these sounds, interpolated with the images of a new place. With time, the idea evolved, and I found images from 24 years ago, when we were teenagers and playing with a video camera. Some of these images were filmed by her while she explored the possibilities that the device offered her in this spontaneous form, which she tried to understand. I felt that a short film lived within these images, and I worked ardently over a year to create it.

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ORN: I was interested in the empty spaces that existed around my Montreal apartment from autumn into winter — the certain melancholy they transmitted. I’m sure this was a reflection of what was passing through my heart at that moment. I thought that, in filling the empty spaces with a certain soundtrack, I could create a kind of elegy that reflected, in an everyday and simple way, memory and love and spatial and temporal dislocation. The most complex part was determining which audio recordings from my sister I should use. I had many, and choosing the most appropriate ones took a lot of time. On top of that, listening to these recordings was very difficult for me; her passing was so recent, and it moved all the feelings inside of me. It was a personal challenge, but I always had the conviction that what I was doing was not just private, but a cinematographic project with a certain magic that I couldn’t explain, only feel.

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ORN: When I found the images of Anita playing with the camera, it moved me very deeply. I realized that she had started her post-mortem project at 14 years old. I felt, frankly, magic — a connection with the material. I didn’t want to include audio recordings of hers that talked of her tragedy. I wanted to show the best of her nature: a brave person, a great partner in film, and, in spite of her situation, full of hope. When I interviewed with a medium — who appears in the second part of the film — I understood the idea completely. I felt the ideas transmitted from this woman could help me craft a soundtrack that recreated what she told me. For example, when she said, “Anita is doing good, she’s with a group of friends making music!”

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ORN: I believe it is a film of transitions for what is coming in the future, but coincidentally, it is the continuation of the idea that I have been exploring in other projects where I’ve worked with my close family members. My grandmother, my dad, my mom, my [older] sister, my nieces and nephews — it’s been a few years of me making movies they appear in. Maybe I’m looking to create bridges in my family history [or], through cinema, heal a broken heart.

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I also think that Tigers is in line with my quest to work with real material without necessarily making realistic films, but [instead] something more poetic and dream-like — a type of “dream documentary.” It’s not something exclusively private, because it has to do with the world. I think that, to change the world, we might have to change our interior world. The more intimate a film… The hope is that the audience can think about their own life, about their own problems. The global situation is delicate, practically destroyed. The war, the violence, the pain have contaminated each and every one of us, no matter the race or religion or class. Because of this, it’s not the time to be quiet and fall into pessimism — it’s a moment to be resilient and to hope, because cynicism does not serve us. It only makes the oppressors more powerful.

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ORN: In certain Chinese traditions, it is said that when you can see tigers in the rain, it means you’ve reached the highest state of meditation and have cured your soul. It’s the last phrase in the song “Los Libros de la Buena Memoria” by Argentine artist Luis Alberto Spinetta. It’s a song that’s accompanied me throughout a lot of my most difficult emotional times. I think making this film and sharing it with the public — and seeing what it generates in people — is the form in which I can see tigers in the rain!

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