Editor Aashish D’Mello educates audiences with award-winning drama ‘Sin Cielo’
In India, especially Mumbai, film is a big aspect of the culture. Growing up, this became not only a favorite pastime for Aashish D’Mello, but a passion. His parents would take him to the movies, or play them at home, and D’Mello would be enthralled. Whether it was Indian or International films, it didn’t take much imagination for the young D’Mello to begin envisioning spending his life making movies, and in his teens, he began to play with editing software. This hobby soon turned into a prosperous career.
“I wanted to be an editor because it is a great mix of art and technology — two things I am passionate about. I love that the mechanical process of moving clips around on a timeline can translate into real stories and emotions,” he said.
Now, D’Mello is an award-winning and internationally sought-after editor. He is known for acclaimed projects like Notes, Magic ’85, Sanzaru and more. The highlight of his career, however, came back in 2017 when D’Mello’s most decorated film, Sin Cielo, gave him worldwide recognition for his editing talents.
“It was a long, sometimes arduous process, but was totally worth it. Every project I work on always teaches me something new about editing and filmmaking in general, and Sin Cielo is the best example of that. We had a lot of footage, and had to condense it into a short amount of runtime. The film focuses on a real social issue and we wanted to explore it in some depth, through characters inspired by real people. It has screened at a number of large festivals and received acclaim around the world. The collaboration process was very rewarding, and I would work with any of the team members again in a heartbeat,” he said.
Sin Cielo tells the story of a young boy in a Mexican border town who hustles any way he can to help his family but learns some very cruel realities when the girl he likes gets ‘disappeared’. The film is based on true stories, and is still relevant and important more than a year after it first screened. The story was one of the biggest reasons D’Mello was drawn to working on the film. It opened his eyes to a social issue that he didn’t know much about — the disappearances of the girls and women in Mexican border towns.
“I was shocked at the scope of this problem, and how little awareness there is about it. I felt that my involvement in the project would not only help increase my awareness about the issue, but also help increase the audiences’ awareness of it too,” he said.
After its premiere at the Oscar-qualifying Atlanta Film Festival in 2018, Sin Cielo went on to be screened at over 25 film festivals around the world. It took home several awards, including Best Short Film at the Calcutta International Cult Film Festival, and the Young Jury Award at the Palm Springs International ShortFest. D’Mello himself was recognized for his abilities and received the Best Editing Award at the Calcutta International Cult Film Festival 2018. Undoubtedly, the film could not have achieved what it did without D’Mello’s touch.
“I speak for the whole team when I say that I have been moved by the warm reception to Sin Cielo. I couldn’t be happier with the idea of sharing our film with so many diverse audiences. We have had audience members come up to us after screenings saying that they were moved to tears, and that they had no idea that the kidnapping and femicides in Mexican border towns were such a huge problem,” he said.
Working on Sin Cielo was one of the most challenging but rewarding jobs that D’Mello has undertaken throughout his esteemed career. As the story was set in Mexico, the dialogue is in Spanish, a language D’Mello isn’t very familiar with, making knowing what to cut that much more difficult. He was consistently having to reference the English version of the script, making sure he understood every bit of emotion that had to come through each cut. As the actors also improvised many lines that weren’t in the script, D’Mello would analyze their facial expressions and body language to determine what was being said.
The editing process took a few months to complete and involved multiple viewings and test screenings for trusted fellow filmmakers. The process was lengthy and though at times tiresome, it helped D’Mello to discover so much about the film. Scenes were cut down, repurposed, reordered and sometimes cut out completely. In keeping with the film’s aesthetic, almost no violence is shown on camera — it all takes place off-screen. Creating a tone for this film was the hardest part, as he had to establish the dangerous and violent undertones that take place around the characters. He cut in empty, desolate shots of the desert over strange atmospheric sounds to give the film this quality. There were many elements that were added during the editing process that did the important work of setting up the dangerous environment in which the characters exist.
Most importantly, the content of the film proved to be a big learning experience for D’Mello, educating him on a social issue in detail. It helped broaden his social awareness. As the Mexican border is such a hot topic in American politics and news right now, this is a story often untold.
“Sin Cielo is set in today’s world. It reflects society; no exaggeration, just reality. It features real, believable characters in situations that are a reality in many parts of the world. Human trafficking is the fastest growing crime in the world today, but public awareness is lacking. Hopefully this film can help give a voice to the thousands of girls and women who are kidnapped every year, not just in Mexico, but all over the world. Films are a great medium for cultivating empathy for people and cultures that are misunderstood, and Sin Cielo strives to bring about that empathy. Films like Sin Cielo show three-dimensional characters, so that we can look at their circumstances instead of being quick to superficially judge them” he concluded.
