Mexican film director triumphs at NYC Quarantine Film Festival

Amid the bad news regarding the COVID-19 health emergency , a Mexican living in Brooklyn , one of the hotspots of the pandemic, has made a great achievement.

Laura Mariana Meraz

, a photographer and film director who lives in the Big Apple, has recently won the New York City Quarantine Film Festival with a short film titled “19 times.”

The three-minutes long story is a visual journal about the recent weeks at the City that Never Sleeps , but with everything shut down.

“I filmed around my neighborhood and I did so in chronological order ; from the moment I received the news on the lockdown with my friends, the emergency shopping and entering the empty store, and the calls with my family that give me strength and everything else,” says Laura.

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“These weeks have been a rollercoaster ; some times you feel good, as an artist , you have time to work on projects and then comes the fear from watching so many news and deaths; it’s shocking,” she adds.

“19 times” won the prize to Best Brooklyn Film and will be exhibited with the other winners in New York City parks by the end of the summer. It is currently available on YouTube

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Laura Mariana has lived in the U.S. city for six years with her German husband. She creates music videos with artists and musicians from both countries.

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“It was really nice to feel the support of Mexican artists and to say Mexico and a Mexican woman won a prize; I feel proud,” mentions Laura.

In the upcoming days, she will present the book 19 times that will show life in times of COVID-19 with photographs in nearly 100 pages.

German publishing house Kerschensteiner Verlag is in charge of the international distribution of the book.

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