when Selena and Los Dinos: Family heirloom Selena Quintanilla’s family first approached director Isabel Castro about making a documentary about the legendary Tejano singer, and she was a little apprehensive.
“It was an honor and excited, but I also wasn’t sure how we could do it differently,” says Castro, as the artist’s life has been well covered in the media, most notably in the 1997 biopic. SelenaIt is directed by Gregory Nava and stars Jennifer Lopez.
Then the Quintanilla family opened their archives. During Castro’s first trip to Corpus Christi, Texas, where Selena grew up, she was introduced to a room they called “the basement,” a floor-to-ceiling treasure trove of VHS tapes, DVDs and flash drives that would form the backbone of her film, which arrived on Netflix in November.
Over the course of two years, she and producer J. Daniel Torres traveled to Corpus Christi more than a dozen times to comb through hundreds of hours of footage. That was before Castro began interviewing Selena’s relatives, including her father and manager Abraham, who died in December, and her mother Marcela.
Selena’s brother and sister, AB and Suzette, are executive producers of the documentary, which chronicles how what was initially a family band, Los Dinos, led to Selena’s emergence as an international star. “To get to know them and learn about their role, I thought it was really important for the world to know about their involvement,” Castro says of Suzette, who played drums for the band, and AB, who was a bass guitarist and produced and co-wrote many of Selena’s singles.
The north star for Castro was her desire to present a coming-of-age story that showed how Selena, who died when she was just 23, developed as a singer, songwriter and pioneering crossover artist, as well as an entrepreneur, in such a short time at a very young age. “It was really important for people to recognize her not only as this icon who has become so meaningful to people like me, but as a young woman so they can understand the incredible weight of what she accomplished,” Castro explains.
As such, the director was intentional not to focus too much on the circumstances of Selena’s murder by Yolanda Saldívar on March 31, 1995.
“There’s a push to understand this terrible tragedy that happened. So, oftentimes, in Selena’s telling and her story, that part of her story ends up taking up more real estate than I think it’s worth,” Castro says. She believes that delving into that would have taken away from her chronicle of Selena’s legacy. Learning about this historical record came with a bittersweet reality.
“I’ve never worked on a movie where I spent so much time with someone who would never know me again,” Castro says. “It’s heartbreaking, but it’s also beautiful.”
This story first appeared in the June standalone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To obtain the magazine, click here to subscribe.
