Julio Hernández Cordón Casts HERE COMES THE DEVIL's Francisco Barreiro in New Vampire Flick

In “The Day is Long and Dark,” Ariel is a Mexican gore film director and an actual vampire. He tours Europe and Latin America’s most important festivals with his latest film, “My Friends are Vampires,” spending sleepless nights in random hotel rooms across Europe and Latin America, seeking out dealers who can score him some blood. The struggle finds him weaker all the time.

 

Ariel has a son in Spain that he can’t see but desperately wishes he could, aware that the only way he will ever be able to rest and and begin to get well is to reunite with the boy.

 

“It’s a movie about a monster that doesn’t want to be one anymore,” Hernández told Variety. “That is his conflict, and sometimes he even succeeds. The motivation is to use the vampire myth to portray a man divided in two.”

 

Putting the film in context with his other work and where he is in his career, Hernández says, “As a director I am at an introspective stage with the theme of fatherhood, an idea that I began to work on with my previous film (San Sebastián Horizontes Latino player) ‘Buy Me a Gun.’”

 

Hernández says that visually the film will be heavily inspired by the work of illustrator Raymond Pettibon.

 

“In his drawings, which intersperse text and image and drink from comics and illustration, Pettibon focuses on historical reflection, emotional longing, poetic ingenuity and strident criticism of his environment,” Hernández explained.

 

“That particularity of aesthetics and discourse is what I want in my film,” he added, saying that Ariel will be constantly reading poetry by Lorca, Panero, Whitman, Verlaine and Akabal. “I want to frame it the way Pettibon does.”

 

“The plan is to film in several cities and recreate their film festivals, or better still at them, if they authorize us to record during the festivals,” Hernández explained. “The film is inspired by Locarno, Venice, Mar del Plata, Bafici, Toulouse and San Sebastian.”