El Sicario: Room 164 (2010/2011)

In an anonymous motel room on the U.S./Mexico border, a Ciudad Juarez hit man speaks. He has killed hundreds of people and is an expert in torture and kidnapping. He was simultaneously on the payroll of the Mexican drug cartels and a commander of the Chihuahua State Police. There is currently a $250,000 contract on his life and he lives as a fugitive, though he has never been charged with a crime in any country. With his face obscured by a black mesh hood, tells his story to the camera inside the very hotel room he once used to hold and torture kidnapped victims. Aided only by a magic marker and notepad, which he uses to illustrate and diagram his words, the sicario describes, in astounding detail, his life of crime, murder, abduction and torture.

El Sicario, Room 164, directed by Italian documentarian Gianfranco Rosi (Below Sea Level), is a cinematic companion piece to the writing of American journalist Charles Bowden, winner of the 1996 Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction and author of books including Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields (2010) and the newly published El Sicario: The Autobiography of a Mexican Assassin (2011).

Interview with Gianfranco Rosi

How did you find Charles Bowden's 2009 Harper's article Magazine, The Sicario?

I've known Charles for six years. We were working together on a project about murders in New Orleans when his piece about the sicario came out in Harper's Magazine. I read it and was immediately mesmerized. ?We have to make a feature film out of this,? I told him. Charles called me a few months later to tell me that eventually the sicario had agreed to do the film -- under certain conditions. So I went to Mexico to meet him. The first six hours were key to the making of the film because he had to trust me. The only thing I told him was, ?I'm not going to judge you. I know you crossed the line between good and evil. I don't know where you stand right now, and I don't care.? This line of thinking was hard to maintain. That's what the film is all about: the grey zone where good and evil meet. You realize that the whole system -- the political system as well as the criminal -- constantly crosses that line. We never asked the sicario any questions. He just started talking and went on and on until the end when he began crying. It was like a confession.

Then you returned to Mexico for additional footage?

Yes, because there were some points I wanted to clarify. The film was shot in those two parts. The second time around, the sicario performed reenactments of what had happened in this motel room, including the bathroom scenes. At the end of the shoot I had six to seven hours of footage. The guy was so intelligent that he never went back and forth in his storytelling. He's one of the brightest people I've met in my life. When I first met him, I realized he knew everything about me -- he had looked me up on the web and he showed me pages about myself that I didn't even know existed! As you can see in the film, the way he tells his story is laid out like a screenplay. He is so articulate and forceful that he sounds like a mythical figure of organized crime -- as though he were the ultimate representative of the underworld. So it's very unnerving because he sometimes appears as a movie character -- except he's for real.

Did you know from the start that the film would be confined to the motel room?

Not at all. The sicario wanted us to find a safe place and that was a very difficult process. I cannot tell you exactly where we shot for security reasons, but it was near the border area. It took three to four days before he agreed to meet us in that motel, and he chose the room - 164. It was the place where he felt safe. I had to spend a couple of nights there alone, until he showed up one day at six o'clock in the morning. I found out only later that the kidnapping, torturing and killing took place in this very room...

He seems defined by a code of honor. For example, he condemns those who kill for pleasure.

Absolutely. There's a lot of pride involved--and don't forget that he's trying to buy himself a ticket to heaven by becoming religious. I strongly believe this has much to do with Mexican culture. In this regard, this film is an intimate portrait of a soul.

The camera hardly ever leaves him.

While he was talking, I thought that if I moved or interrupted him, I would break the intimacy. That's why there's basically only one frame. I was so engaged by his story itself that I hoped the audience would be too.

Did you believe everything he said? Were there times when you thought that he was leading you on?

Never! And yet many people have asked, ?How can you be so sure he's not acting?? If he was, I would be the best director in the world! Besides, Charles was the man who made this documentary possible. He introduced me to the sicario and I trust him completely. Without him and his 20-year experience with Mexican hit men, nothing would have happened.

The sicario seems to be defined by his ability to blend in and to disappear.

If you met him by accident at the supermarket, you definitely would not notice him. But the minute he starts talking, he becomes a different man. His voice is so powerful that it engulfs you totally; it creates an immediate sense of intimacy.

Were there moments when you felt threatened?

Just once when I was in a car with him, and he was driving like mad. It was a wreck of a car and I was afraid the police might stop us at any moment. So I asked him what would happen if they did. He said he would run away, and that that was why I was sitting next to him!

Did the sicario ask to watch the final cut?

He did. He couldn't believe how true to life the film was and he was particularly amazed by how intimate his voice sounded. He said that this was a unique piece of filmmaking. And it is.

Interview with Charles Bowden

How did you meet Gianfranco Rosi?

Gianfranco Rosi heard me on the radio while driving across the American West and called for an interview. You never learn anything by saying no, so I generally say yes. I asked, ?Can you cook?? He said yes. I said, ?Then you can come.? He showed me the early footage of Below Sea Level, his film that eventually won several prizes at the Venice Film Festival. We became friends.

How did you first develop an interest in the sicario?

I was having coffee with a Mexican friend when he mentioned he was hiding a sicario from the laws of all nations and from the drug organization that had put a $250,000 contract on his life. I said, ?I want to put him on paper.? He said yes. So I went over a thousand miles to where the sicario was hiding. I'd been around Mexican killers for over twenty years; I've had them in my home and drank with them in Mexico. They don't talk about their work much because talking gets you killed. I wanted there to be some record of this element of Mexican death: the trained, professional murderer who functions as a tool of the government and criminal organizations, the two faces of a single power in Mexico.

How did you initially approach the sicario?

First, in the parking lot of a coffee shop. Then, in the parking lot of a pizza parlor. He wore a skull cap, scowled, and did not like eye contact. I followed him around in a separate car. Finally, he picked a motel, I paid for a room, and we entered. He said, ?Nothing I say ever leaves this room.? I ignored this demand and started taking notes. I learned a long time ago that everyone is looking for someone they can trust to tell their story to, and I learned a long time ago that keeping my word was my only security. I shoved some photographs of drug murders across the table. He said, ?These photographs could get you killed.?

Then he talked for hours. I wrote. He made drawings, showed them to me, then carefully tore them up. He said if anything went wrong, he would come for me. I agreed to his terms. He had arrived with twenty, thirty pages of printouts on me he gathered from the internet; he wanted me to understand he knew all about me and he could find me. I relaxed once I glanced at all the research he had done on me because I understood I was dealing with a rational person. He was very intelligent and well-spoken, a man possessed of an almost icy passion for life. He said, ?I will tell you horrible things.? I listened for two days. Later, I checked with the man who had protected him and with a former cartel member who knew him when he was coming up. To this day I do not know his real name. Yet I have no doubt about the truth of his story.

Were there any strings attached to your publishing his story?

The only condition was that I hide the location where I spoke with him. I promised him if I sold it, I would get him some money. The story eventually was published in the US, Italy, and Mexico. When the deal finally went through, I drove a long distance to deliver the cash--checks don't exist in this work.

Why did the sicario decide to let you interview him?

He was in the market for a witness who could understand his life, and decided I would suffice. He knows he will be executed--contracts such as the one on his head are never recalled--and he wants to somehow make amends for the hundreds of people he has tortured and murdered before that happens. He has become a Christian; he converted while still a sicario. He thinks God has sent me to convey his lessons to others. Like all of us, he wants his life to have meaning, and I am to write it down and send it out into the world. Given his life, he doubts that even God can forgive him, yet he still wants to tell his story, and he hopes that by doing so, he can get others to leave that life. It's a frail hope, and he knows it. But he needs to try.

What is he like in person?

He is normal. He is just like you or I. He is of average height, he dresses like a workman with sturdy boots and a knit cap. He had a normal childhood, and he is the member of a large, poor Mexican family. He refuses be a victim, not of poverty, not of his parents. He became a killer not because of trauma but because it was a way to live. He blames no one but himself for his life. He was a commander in the Mexican state police and was on the cartel payroll at the same time. He has delivered suitcases of money to major Mexican officials. He has met major figures in the drug industry, including the head of the Juarez cartel. He emphasizes the connections between his criminal world and the state itself. He could teach a college level course on how power actually operates in Mexico.

If you met him on street, you would notice nothing. If he came to your door, you would suspect nothing. There are hundreds of dead people who never saw him coming. He is a messenger from the future. As the modern state erodes and fails to provide security and income for its members, and as a new economy supplants the official economy, sicarios will appear in many places--and already have. This time he speaks Spanish, but he already knows many languages and places. This is not a film about a freak, but about a growing population. For the first time, to our knowledge, such a person speaks of his own free will and tells us what he knows and what we must learn.

Did he ever show emotion when he was in the business of killing?

He is a professional who hates a sloppy job. He has deep pride in the quality of his work and almost no sense of self importance. I have never heard him claim to be more than he is. His only sense of ego, if it is that, is in the craft of kidnapping, torture and killing. He is appalled by shoddy work. He is very methodical and orderly.

He resents people who like to kill. They are not professional. Real sicarios kill for money. But there are people who kill for fun. This kind of person does not belong in organized crime. They're crazy. If you discover such a person in your unit, you kill him. The people you really want to recruit are police or ex-police: trained killers. He said, ?I had feelings when I was in the torture houses and people would be lying in their vomit and blood. I was not permitted to help them.? Three times during the filming he broke down and had to be held. I think he was as stunned by these moments as I was.

Filmmaker Biographies

Gianfranco Rosi (Director/Producer/Cinematographer)

Gianfranco Rosi produced, directed, and photographed Boatman (1993), and Afterwords (2000), which premiered at the Venice Film Festival. The film Below Sea Level, which he directed, photographed, and produced, premiered in at the Venice Film Festival in 2008 and won numerous awards including the Orizzonti Documentary Award, the Grand Prix and Prix des Jeunes at Cinema Du Reel in Paris, and Best Italian Documentary at the Bellaria Film Festival. Below Sea Level was also nominated for Best Documentary at the 2009 European Film Academy Awards. Rosi is a guest lecturer at New York University Film School and the CCC in Mexico City, and teaches documentary at SUPSI in Switzerland and at the Accademia del l'immagine in L'Aquila. He currently lives in Rome, Italy.

Charles Bowden (Writer/Co-Producer)

Charles Bowden is one of the premier writers on the American environment and social issues along the U.S./Mexico Border. His recent books include Murder City: Killing the Hidden Waters, Blue Desert, Blood Orchid, Blues for Cannibals, Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing, Juarez: the laboratory of our future, Down by the River, A Shadow in the City, Inferno, Exodus/Exodo, Trinity, Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields, and Dreamland. He also writes for GQ, National Geographic, Mother Jones, and other magazines. He currently lives in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

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