Midnight Family (2019)

Midnight Family: Directed by Luke Lorentzen. With Juan Ochoa, Fer Ochoa, Josue Ochoa, Manuel Hernandez. In Mexico City’s wealthiest neighborhoods, the Ochoa family runs a private ambulance, competing with other for-profit EMTs for patients in need of urgent help.

“Midnight Family is a captivating documentary. As an audience, the textual of the documentary seems to me like a interesting and successful mix of documentary and feature film. What I mean is that the content of the documentary is real thing that happened to the family and the filmmaker, while the shooting, neon-light style of lighting, storytelling and so on are quite delicate. The night scenes occupy the majority of the documentary body may be a reason as well. The director believes that there should not be a set boundary between the style of documentary and fictional film.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe documentary was shot in one-person crew. In other words, Luke Lorentzen himself. He had two shooting cameras with him. One of which was set on the car front window and the other was in the back of the car. While the director collaborated with his Mexican friend in the editing as to distance himself from the footage, as he admitted in a dialogue in Hong Kong. Because he himself witnessed those scenes, and the footage may work for him in the way that does not work for common audiences.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe director spent around a hundred days within the 2-3 years documenting the midnight family and made some follow-up shooting which at the end hold up the spiritual essence of the documentary. The director intends and manages to show audiences the undertow of the business of Mexican ambulance and the ordinary people within.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe director graduated from Stanford University.”