Photo by Elinana Naboolio. Courtesy of Merced Elizondo.
Mexican-American filmmaker Merced Elizondo is Oak Cliff born and raised. He is the son of two immigrant parents from Mexico, and attended Barbara Jordan Elementary School in his youth before later attending Catholic school.
“I grew up with my dad who worked a very blue collar job. He’s a mechanic on Beckley, right near Jefferson,” he said. “This is a community that I’ve not only been a part of for a long time, but I still feel very connected to just because I’m there all the time and it’s a part of me.”
Now, he is an Oscar -qualifying filmmaker, after winning “Best Live Action Short Film” at the 2024 St. Louis International Film Festival for his latest short The Mourning Of.
A still from “The Mourning Of.” Photo courtesy of Merced Elizondo.
This achievement is something that he said he never expected. Originally attending The University of Texas at Austin for advertising, he thought that the major would tickle his creative fancy and would be enough to scratch that itch he had for filmmaking.
“I grew up loving writing, loving movies, just always wanting to be creative, but you know, with someone with my background, you don’t ever really allow yourself to dream big,” Elizondo said.
There are no artists in his family, no one had ever attempted to have a career as a musician, painter, poet or filmmaker. This creative urge was just something he kept as a secret to himself, he said, growing up filming start and stop videos on his LG chocolate with his brother just for fun.
It wasn’t until the summer of 2015 where he did an internship at NBC Universal in New York, surrounded by inspiration from people chasing their dreams and passions, that his mind changed.
“I thought, ‘man, like what am I doing? I don’t really care about advertising,’” he said.
And this passion for filmmaking was clear to others. During his final internship review, a supervisor of the program told him that advertising and marketing isn’t what he should be doing because he wants to be a filmmaker. From there, his creative career journey kicked off.
Coming back to Austin after that summer, he knocked on every door he could until a production company gave him a chance to learn the ropes that he would’ve learned if he chose to pursue film school, along with joining the film club and taking extra film classes.
Then he had to tell his parents his upcoming degree would be completed, but he would not go into advertising.
“They were freaking out naturally as they would be,” he said. “I mean, at the time I was really upset. Like ‘mom, you don’t get it, dad, you don’t understand mom and dad.’ But now looking back on it, if I ever have kids. Yeah, I’d be terrified too.”
Luckily, pursuing his dream has led to extraordinary achievements. While bouncing from job to job in the industry, he has continued to pursue his own projects putting together four short films.
“It wasn’t until my third film, the one right before ‘The Mourning Of,’ called ‘MANOS DE ORO,’” he said. “That’s the one that changed everything for me,”
The short entirely in Spanish and black-and-white starred Julio César Cedillo from Netflix’s Narcos: Mexico, Sicario as a mechanic, much like Elizondo’s father, and even has parts of the movie filmed in his dad’s Oak Cliff shop.
“‘MANOS DE ORO’ is the first film I like ever truly made because it’s the kind of film that I aspire to keep making in terms of style,” he said.
With The Mourning Of, Elizondo said that although his latest film is in color it still has a stylistic through line that is across all his films.
“The through line that connects my films is a character in pursuit of the truth, hiding from the truth, running away from the truth, denying the truth, on a journey with the truth, because I think it reveals so much about someone when you put them in a circumstance where they have to face their truth,” he said.
One month into his Oscar-qualifying campaign, he said now is the hardest part as he is in the big push for the first round to become shortlisted for the best 15 short films in the world in December.
“We kicked off exactly one month ago, and it’s been hectic for sure, and we still have over two months left,” he said. “I’m bracing myself for what’s to come to see if we get short listed.”
Although The Mourning Of did not film in the neighborhood, Elizondo said the heart of it is still very much Oak Cliff.
“There’s this Oak Cliff punk rock mentality that I’m very proud of and I carry it with me everywhere I go.”
