Conversations with Jorge Jaén

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jorge Jaén.

Hi Jorge, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Filmmaking wasn’t something I consciously chose while growing up. I was supposed to be a doctor, like my parents. But when I finished high school and had to decide what came next, I kept thinking about my dad asking third-grade-me what I wanted to be when I grew up, to which I replied with “I want to be happy.”

That memory led me back to the things that actually made me happy. No, it didn’t look like med school. It looked more like my <i>Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed </i>DVD I had as a kid, and how I would rewatch the behind-the-scenes feature over and over again. Happiness was being a part of the people who decided to come together to create something that felt as alive as a talking dog.

Choosing to do film came as a shock to my parents. It’s been a process of trial and error ever since, but through that uncertainty, I’ve slowly grown into someone who knows what he wants his future to look like. Today, I’m a director, driven by the same curiosity I had as a kid, still dreaming to live inside the behind-the-scenes of my own films.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Ever since moving to LA from Panama City, I’ve felt like I’ve been playing catch-up. It’s hard not to feel like everyone here has a jump start in this industry. Many people grew up close to it, surrounded by its language, its rules, and its shortcuts. Coming from a place where the film industry felt distant, it’s been easy for me to belittle myself.

However, the struggle hasn’t been technical or professional; it’s been about learning how to see myself in the kind of art I want to make, in the industry I want to belong to, without losing my upbringing in the attempt.

This, while hard, has forced me to slow down, listen, and be intentional with my voice as an artist. LA is a beautiful city, but it’s easy to get lost in the chaos of so many dreamers chasing the same thing. Learning to hold onto my own roots and perspective within that noise has been one of my biggest challenges, and one of my most important lessons.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I’m a film director. My work often revolves around relationships, whether they are romantic ones, friendships, or family dynamics. I like showing two people who find each other, fall into each other, disagree, pull apart, and somehow still keep coming back. As an artist, this is a realization that I was so happy to discover. It felt like a piece of my identity was being revealed to me.

Now, I think what I’m most proud of is how unapologetically “me” my work has become. That hasn’t been easy, and it definitely comes with a cost, but the world is so rigid and square already, I think art should just be a vessel for people to live through. I don’t like the idea of limiting it or forcing it to behave, because once you do that, something vital gets lost.

What I have found is that people love to live through movies. An audience can watch the same film, and each comes out with totally unique takes on it. That, to me, is a form of connection, a relationship between filmmaker and audience that only exists in the movie theater.

I made that connection with my most recent short: “SKIN,” about a haunted artist whose previous lover makes him act in obsessive ways. I saw how each person who watched it came out with a conclusion that carried a piece of their personality within. That discovery stuck with me, and it’s definitely something that I want to keep exploring as I move forward.

We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
For me, risk-taking in film often comes from refusing to keep things neatly separated. One of the biggest risks I take as a filmmaker is blending genres that are not “supposed to coexist; pairing something tender, like your first love, with something visceral and unsettling, like the horror of losing control over your own body.

As a storyteller, I’ve found out I’m less interested in asking whether a story fits into a specific category. “Is it a horror? A romance? A drama?” I think it should be more complicated than that. I’ve fallen in love with forcing different genres to exist in the same world because from that tension, something honest comes out.

There’s an exchange that happens: sometimes it might feel uncomfortable, sometimes it feels inevitable. Either way, it becomes less about watching something and more about feeling it.

There’s comfort in feeling your feelings. I see risk as an invitation to question why we’ve been taught to keep certain emotions separated in the first place. Often, those divisions exist because the overlap might reveal how much these genres have in common.

My goal is to create work that invites people to sit with that contradiction, to discover that discomfort and tenderness don’t cancel each other out, but can expand how we understand both.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.jorgejaenr.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jorgejaenr/

Image Credits
Tammy Premchan Zane Farmer Polly Lau