Director
Jen Kuhn
Director's Statement
GRACIAS PADRE is inspired by events in my own life. After taking a recreational DNA test, I uncovered a long-held family secret: the man who raised me is not my biological father, and I was conceived by a sperm donor. Around the same time, my parents moved to Mazatlán, Mexico, where I became fascinated by its vibrant community of retired expats. As a filmmaker looking for the subject of my first feature, those two elements came together to inspire GRACIAS PADRE.
Discovering that I was donor-conceived was earth-shattering. In an instant, the story I had always understood about myself vanished. It was a real crisis of identity. If half of my DNA is now a mystery, who am I?
This led me to a question I couldn’t stop thinking about: What if you could meet your dad for the first time, as an adult, without the baggage of a lifetime?
I have yet to pursue a relationship with my biological father, so in some ways making GRACIAS PADRE became my way of imagining that meeting. “Chelsea” is not me, and “Phil” is not my biological father. Fiction gave me the freedom to explore the emotional possibilities of that encounter without recreating my own life.
Tonally, the film blends a coming-of-middle-age story with a father-daughter rom-com, minus the “rom.” I wanted emotional honesty without heaviness, and humor that comes from the characters and situation rather than from jokes.
My protagonist, CHELSEA, is confronting middle age as she tries to become a mother herself. She arrives in Mexico awaiting the genetic results of the only embryo from her fourth round of IVF. Just as she discovers that half of her biological history is not what she believed, she faces the possibility that she may not be able to conceive. I wanted those two journeys to collide: searching for where you came from while deciding when and how your own family begins.
The setting of Mazatlán is much more than a backdrop. I was struck by how many retirees come there for the opportunity to reinvent themselves. PHIL has done exactly that, enjoying his third act far away from adult responsibilities and his worried daughter, OLIVIA. Chelsea arrives feeling constrained by the life she is supposed to want and discovers that she could use a little reinvention herself. By contrast, Olivia brings the very baggage Chelsea doesn’t have: a lifetime of love and disappointment with Phil.
In making GRACIAS PADRE, I wanted to explore the strange space between biology and family, and what can happen when the two no longer quite mean the same thing.
Director
Jen Kuhn
Director's Statement
GRACIAS PADRE is inspired by events in my own life. After taking a recreational DNA test, I uncovered a long-held family secret: the man who raised me is not my biological father, and I was conceived by a sperm donor. Around the same time, my parents moved to Mazatlán, Mexico, where I became fascinated by its vibrant community of retired expats. As a filmmaker looking for the subject of my first feature, those two elements came together to inspire GRACIAS PADRE.
Discovering that I was donor-conceived was earth-shattering. In an instant, the story I had always understood about myself vanished. It was a real crisis of identity. If half of my DNA is now a mystery, who am I?
This led me to a question I couldn’t stop thinking about: What if you could meet your dad for the first time, as an adult, without the baggage of a lifetime?
I have yet to pursue a relationship with my biological father, so in some ways making GRACIAS PADRE became my way of imagining that meeting. “Chelsea” is not me, and “Phil” is not my biological father. Fiction gave me the freedom to explore the emotional possibilities of that encounter without recreating my own life.
Tonally, the film blends a coming-of-middle-age story with a father-daughter rom-com, minus the “rom.” I wanted emotional honesty without heaviness, and humor that comes from the characters and situation rather than from jokes.
My protagonist, CHELSEA, is confronting middle age as she tries to become a mother herself. She arrives in Mexico awaiting the genetic results of the only embryo from her fourth round of IVF. Just as she discovers that half of her biological history is not what she believed, she faces the possibility that she may not be able to conceive. I wanted those two journeys to collide: searching for where you came from while deciding when and how your own family begins.
The setting of Mazatlán is much more than a backdrop. I was struck by how many retirees come there for the opportunity to reinvent themselves. PHIL has done exactly that, enjoying his third act far away from adult responsibilities and his worried daughter, OLIVIA. Chelsea arrives feeling constrained by the life she is supposed to want and discovers that she could use a little reinvention herself. By contrast, Olivia brings the very baggage Chelsea doesn’t have: a lifetime of love and disappointment with Phil.
In making GRACIAS PADRE, I wanted to explore the strange space between biology and family, and what can happen when the two no longer quite mean the same thing.
Director
Jen Kuhn
Director's Statement
GRACIAS PADRE is inspired by events in my own life. After taking a recreational DNA test, I uncovered a long-held family secret: the man who raised me is not my biological father, and I was conceived by a sperm donor. Around the same time, my parents moved to Mazatlán, Mexico, where I became fascinated by its vibrant community of retired expats. As a filmmaker looking for the subject of my first feature, those two elements came together to inspire GRACIAS PADRE.
Discovering that I was donor-conceived was earth-shattering. In an instant, the story I had always understood about myself vanished. It was a real crisis of identity. If half of my DNA is now a mystery, who am I?
This led me to a question I couldn’t stop thinking about: What if you could meet your dad for the first time, as an adult, without the baggage of a lifetime?
I have yet to pursue a relationship with my biological father, so in some ways making GRACIAS PADRE became my way of imagining that meeting. “Chelsea” is not me, and “Phil” is not my biological father. Fiction gave me the freedom to explore the emotional possibilities of that encounter without recreating my own life.
Tonally, the film blends a coming-of-middle-age story with a father-daughter rom-com, minus the “rom.” I wanted emotional honesty without heaviness, and humor that comes from the characters and situation rather than from jokes.
My protagonist, CHELSEA, is confronting middle age as she tries to become a mother herself. She arrives in Mexico awaiting the genetic results of the only embryo from her fourth round of IVF. Just as she discovers that half of her biological history is not what she believed, she faces the possibility that she may not be able to conceive. I wanted those two journeys to collide: searching for where you came from while deciding when and how your own family begins.
The setting of Mazatlán is much more than a backdrop. I was struck by how many retirees come there for the opportunity to reinvent themselves. PHIL has done exactly that, enjoying his third act far away from adult responsibilities and his worried daughter, OLIVIA. Chelsea arrives feeling constrained by the life she is supposed to want and discovers that she could use a little reinvention herself. By contrast, Olivia brings the very baggage Chelsea doesn’t have: a lifetime of love and disappointment with Phil.
In making GRACIAS PADRE, I wanted to explore the strange space between biology and family, and what can happen when the two no longer quite mean the same thing.