What first inspired you to become a filmmaker and when did storytelling become your life’s work

Fernanda Alberdi is a Mexican filmmaker, writer, and producer whose work exists in the space between memory and emotion — a cinema rooted in intimacy, silence, identity, grief, and the invisible weight people carry behind closed doors. Originally from Guadalajara, Mexico and currently based in Miami, Alberdi approaches filmmaking as an act of emotional excavation: a way of uncovering the fragile truths that often remain hidden within ordinary life.

Her production company, Home Lights Films, was born from a deeply personal image that has followed her for years: the moment at dusk when lights begin turning on inside buildings across a city skyline. For Alberdi, each illuminated window represents an unseen universe — families healing, couples falling apart, children growing up too fast, people grieving quietly, loneliness existing beside love. That image eventually became the soul of her filmmaking philosophy: every person carries a story worthy of being witnessed.

Through Home Lights Films, Alberdi creates emotionally immersive cinema centered around human vulnerability and psychological realism. Her stories are often driven by characters navigating trauma, anxiety, identity, generational wounds, emotional repression, and the search for belonging. Influenced by filmmakers such as Darren Aronofsky, Guillermo del Toro, J. A. Bayona, and Andrei Tarkovsky, her work blends grounded realism with atmospheric imagery and emotional intensity, transforming deeply personal experiences into cinematic reflections that feel both intimate and universal.

Alberdi recently graduated with a Master’s degree in Filmmaking in the United States and also holds a background in Live Show Production. Her multidisciplinary experience across directing, producing, writing, visual development, and creative production has shaped a filmmaking voice that is both technically meticulous and emotionally instinctive. She approaches cinema not only as storytelling, but as world-building through texture, sound, silence, memory, visual rhythm, and sensory detail.

As a Mexican filmmaker working between Mexico and the United States, Alberdi is especially drawn to stories that explore cultural identity, emotional inheritance, and the invisible emotional patterns passed down through family. Food, religion, domestic spaces, childhood memories, and intergenerational relationships frequently become recurring emotional symbols throughout her work. Her films often focus on characters who feel emotionally trapped between who they are, who they were expected to become, and the versions of themselves they are still trying to understand.

This emotional language is especially present in Where Roots Are Born, one of Alberdi’s most personal projects to date. The short film follows a young woman preparing arroz con leche alongside her grandmother while confronting grief, anxiety, and the emotional legacy carried within family traditions. Rather than treating memory as exposition, Alberdi uses sensory storytelling — textures, sound, ritual, food preparation, silence, and fragmented emotion — to create a cinematic experience that feels lived rather than explained.

The project was developed between the United States and Mexico, with production taking place in Mexico City alongside a predominantly Mexican crew. The casting process involved more than 300 actresses for the lead role, reflecting the level of care and emotional precision behind the film’s development. For Alberdi, the project became not only a film, but also a reconnection to her roots, language, family history, and cultural identity. She frequently credits her Mexican collaborators and creative team as an essential part of the emotional and artistic foundation behind Home Lights Films.

Her previous works include Echoes of a Fragment, a psychological meditation on isolation and fractured identity; Antonieta: A Modern Catastrophe, inspired by the emotional legacy of Antonieta Rivas Mercado; and Frenesí, a reinterpretation of Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy. Across each project, Alberdi’s voice remains centered on emotional realism, feminine vulnerability, intimacy, and the tension between tenderness and discomfort.

Alberdi’s mission through Home Lights Films is to create emotionally honest cinema that gives visibility to the hidden emotional realities of everyday life. Her work seeks to explore grief, memory, vulnerability, cultural identity, mental health, and the psychological spaces people often carry in silence. Rather than offering answers, her films aim to create emotional recognition — moments where audiences can see fragments of themselves reflected on screen.

Her long-term vision is to continue building intimate, internationally resonant stories rooted in Mexican and Latin American identity while creating cinema that emotionally connects audiences across cultures. Through sensory and human-centered storytelling, Alberdi hopes to contribute to a generation of filmmakers redefining contemporary Latin American cinema through vulnerability, emotional depth, and psychological honesty.

Her films and creative work have received recognition at multiple international film festivals and award platforms, but for Alberdi, cinema is ultimately less about recognition and more about resonance. She believes film should leave something unresolved inside the audience — a feeling, a memory, or a question they carry with them long after the screen fades to black.

At the heart of Alberdi’s work is the belief that cinema can make people feel less alone. Through Home Lights Films, she continues building stories that illuminate the emotional realities often hidden behind everyday life — stories that are raw, human, unsettling, tender, and profoundly alive.