'The 33' director Patricia Riggen on telling the trapped Chilean miners' story

Patricia Riggen was born in Mexico and worked as a writer-producer on documentaries and short films before moving to New York, where she earned a master's in directing and screenwriting at Columbia. The 45-year old Guadalajara native has directed two feature films -- "Under the Same Moon" (2007) and "Girl in Progress" (2012) -- but nothing as ambitious or high-profile as her latest, "The 33." The story of the Chilean miners who spent 69 days trapped underground in 2010 before their spectacular, and globally televised, rescue, the film stars Antonio Banderas, Lou Diamond Phillips, Juliette Binoche and Gabriel Byrne. Newsday contributor Lewis Beale spoke with the director about filming in a real mine, how the real miners have reacted to the film, and other topics.

This seems to be a project that a lot of people would have killed to direct. How did you get it?

I went to a meeting in Los Angeles with [producer] Mike Medavoy, and I pitched my vision of the story. I didn't want to use the script he had sent me; I wanted to start all over, the beginning, the middle, the end, which character should be portrayed. And he hired me on the spot.

The film is based on "Deep Down Dark," a nonfiction book about the incident by Hector Tobar. The book is filled with tons of material. How did you boil it down to a manageable screenplay?

The script and the book were developed at the same time, they were generated from the same set of interviews and we shared the same information. One of the biggest challenges was how to make this into a two-hour movie. Movies can only handle a certain number of characters, so that was a challenge to decide who are we keeping. I tried to bring in as many experiences of the miners as possible, within a reduced number of characters. I ended up with 10 below [ground], 10 above, which is a lot. I didn't want anyone to be confused with who is who. It's a movie about 33 men, not a single character study.

The underground scenes were shot in two real mines in Colombia. How did you find them?

I scouted a lot of mines in Chile. They are very scary, like going into hell. Chile's mines are very dangerous, the country has a lot of earthquakes. So we found this wonderful salt mine in Colombia that would take us. My cinematographer is from Peru and knows South America very well. He knew about these places already, they are landmarks in the country.

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What was it like shooting inside a mine?

The problem of working in a mine, you are inside the belly of the monster, and it controls you. The air you breathe, the stones that fall on your head, we had to be on guard. Everything down there is different. We had to figure out how to create these things in the mine. The head of the mine was always there with us, looking out for us. We were not able to eat in there, there were no bathrooms, it was very challenging. We were there 14 hours a day.

How did the real miners react when they saw the finished film?

They were very quiet. They are a quiet group of men. And then they embraced me, they hugged me. They loved the movie, they have been actively involved in all the stages of the movie, and I feel happy they feel good about it. For them, it's not a movie, it's very much alive, the event.

What do you want people to feel at the end of the film?

I want people to be engaged, to feel what it was like to be down there, what it was like to have a family member trapped inside. I want them to feel like all of the characters in this story. One of the messages is faith, believing. If you lose your faith, you have nothing. The same thing applies above. Those families never doubted they were alive, and that was key.

You seem to be just about the only Latina director working in the industry. How do you feel about that?

I think being Latino is not a big problem anymore, because those three guys from Mexico [Guillermo Del Toro, Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro González Iñárritu] have broken the mold. But I do feel discrimination now as a woman. It's funny because I have worked steadily since I started, but things are very hard for women and need to change. I am pleased this conversation has finally started.