Jorge Luis Borges, with his blend of metaphysics and poetry, gave us one of the most profound reflections on time: “Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river that sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.” In this quote beats a paradox that not only runs through the human condition, but defines, in a disquieting way, the act of making cinema: the struggle to leave a mark on the unstoppable river of time.
In Artificial Ruins, our latest film, currently in post-production, we explore this tension through the story of a group of independent filmmakers seeking the impossible: to adapt a Borges story for the big screen. Yet their struggle is not only against technical and budgetary limitations, but against something more elusive and universal: time. In a world saturated by ephemeral consumption, how do you create something that aspires to permanence? Reels is our meditation on that impossible quest.
The title Reels is no coincidence. These brief, viral pieces that dominate the digital landscape are the antithesis of the cinema our characters are trying to make. While the world consumes content in 15-second bites, Marcos, Lu, and Boris attempt to build something that transcends the instant. It is precisely this clash between the ephemeral and the eternal that gives the film its dramatic pulse.
In Reels, time is not merely an enemy: it is another character. Every sequence of the film reflects a different facet of time: the nostalgia for what no longer exists, the urgency of the present, and the uncertainty of a future where cinema and literature face extinction in an ocean of fleeting content.
Directing this film has been, for me, confronting that Borgesian tiger of time. Every day of shooting was a battle against the clock, against resources, against the elements. But, like Borges suggests, we are also the tiger. We are the time that consumes us and the fire that burns us, and it is in that struggle where our art finds meaning.
In the world of Reels, reality gives no quarter. The characters, like all of us, struggle against a current that drags them toward oblivion. But in their fight to create, to tell a story, they find a form of resistance. It is a small act of defiance against the fleeting, a declaration that, even in a world of infinite scroll, there are still stories worth telling slowly.
In the end, between the fire and the river, there remains cinema. Not as a victory against time, but as a way of inhabiting it. In Artificial Ruins, we invite you to reflect on what it means to create in a world where time, like the Borgesian tiger, is always at our heels. Because, in the end, we are not just filmmakers facing a deadline: we are part of that river, that tiger, that fire. And in the act of making cinema, we find our own way of being immortal, even if only for an instant.