Tania Ãlvarez Guerrero

Tell us about your connection to nature, why is it important in your life?

Once, as a little girl, I was swinging in the kindergarten playground, and a butterfly landed on my nose. At first, I was surprised, and everything happened very quickly, but it stayed there for a few seconds while I swung back and forth, trying to look at it. Although at that moment I didn't realize how important that image would be for me in the future, I remember the feeling of knowing that it was a special moment and wondering why it had decided to land on me.

Did it mistake me for a leaf?

Did it want to catch my attention for something and that's why it landed there? Did it know it was on the nose of a human being? Of another living creature?

That moment stayed deeply within me. Sharing the swing with it on my nose later made me understand that we both share the same world and that in some way, we were intimately connected.

The butterflies on my nose, the trees around me, the spiders I found on the path, the rain falling on my face, the birds I saw crossing the sky, and the cats staring at me, the snails slowly crawling in the parking lot of my house—nature makes me curious about my place and hers, and all the elements in it on planet Earth. At the same time, it brings me a kind of tranquillity, the certainty of not being alone, because she is there and I am in her, something akin to happiness. That's why I want to protect her and share those feelings and ideas through moving images.

Tell us about why you landed on this topic. Why should people be aware of the stories or species in the film?

Mesoamerican tapirs are strange, tender, intelligent, and unique animals. From the moment I first learned about them, I fell in love. You only have to look at a photograph of their faces, and the same will happen to you. They are completely unforgettable. They are the largest mammals in Central America, and they are a species that is very little known, as well as the great role they play in the ecosystem. Currently, they are endangered, despite the earth being their home for 30 million years, and now it could stop being so. There are

fewer than 5,000 left in the world, and they are responsible for the regeneration of the forests, as they move through them, spreading seeds from the fruits they eat.

How can we not completely admire the elephants of Central America? Like magic, they make trees grow in the places they pass through and have the sweetest whistle in the Maya forest.

Tender, unique, charismatic, and intelligent are also the children I met in the Maya forest, in the communities of Nuevo Becal and Mahogany Heights, who, living in it, know the tapir very well because they see it constantly in their daily lives when they accompany their parents to the mountain or when they walk to school. They know what it looks like and what it eats, what its tracks look like and what it does in its days, and above all, they have plans and ideas to protect it.

The Maya Forest: When a Tapir Looks at You is a short film in which children living on the outskirts of the Maya Forest—both in the south and north, in two different countries, Mexico and Belize—write letters to each other, sharing everything they know about the Mesoamerican tapirs that inhabit the same forest, in an effort to find them and see them again, as they are nearing extinction

What are you hoping people will take away and feel from watching your film?

I am interested in making the Mesoamerican tapir a visible species. I want it to be on the radar of most people as a species, for people to know what it looks like and what it does, and for this to gain many protectors and defenders to prevent its extinction and preserve the Maya forest. I hope that the tapir’s whistle and gaze, which you will hear and see in the film, reach the hearts of the viewers and that they join the promise of search and protection that the children of Nuevo Becal and Mahogany Heights, the tapir conservation biologists, and the film crew have towards the Mesoamerican tapirs.

What do you think needs to change to help people reconnect with nature?

I believe that sometimes the hustle and bustle of the modern world distances us from nature. The big cities and the priorities that come with living in them, along with the limited spaces and time available for developing a connection with animals and plants, make it easy to forget that there is a relationship with nature that can and should be cultivated.

I think it is necessary to continue building bridges and connections—with films and all kinds of expressions, as much as we can—that unite the space created between ourselves and nature, and that constantly help humans remember the connection they have with it. That they can look around at the non-human species that inhabit planet Earth with us, and thus learn to be better neighbors and inhabitants of a shared home.

Biggest learning from the creative process?

I have been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, and when I feel bad and have a crisis, watching natural history documentaries and learning about animals and how they bravely survive in the world helps stabilize my emotions , makes me calm and gives me a sense of purpose.

I enjoy watching and listening to animals and trying to decipher what they are trying to communicate to me with their gaze or their sounds.