God Speaks Spanish

Overview: In a Latino-owned funeral home, a sheltered young funeral director spends what should be a routine night helping his grandmother prepare the body of a John Doe pulled from a highway bus crash. As the hours pass, buried family history starts to surface, secrets neither of them has ever said out loud. In this family, Spanish can be a weapon, a wound, a joke, or a prayer. GOD SPEAKS SPANISH is about what we inherit from the people who raised us, and what it costs to finally see them clearly.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

I first walked into this world more than twenty-five years ago, with an earlier short called God Speaks Spanish that I shot in Chicago. The mortuary never left me. It’s the one room where a family can’t avoid itself — where the dead are washed, dressed, and prayed over, and the living finally say what they’ve been hiding.

This film is one night in that room. Jake knows how to care for the dead, but he can’t finish a prayer in his grandmother’s language. Doña Petra speaks Spanish like a blade and a blessing at the same time. Between them lies a John Doe and a family history nobody wanted to open.

I grew up in East L.A., and I learned early how much a name and a language can carry, and what it costs to lose them. God Speaks Spanish is about what we inherit from the people who raised us, and the moment we finally see them clearly.

— Miguel Orozco, Writer/Director

Credits

Written and Directed by Miguel Orozco
Starring Laura Patalano as Doña Petra · David DeAngello as Jake Moreno
with Alex Gonzalez as Rodolfo

Cinematographer & Editor - Francisco Jimenez
Production Designer - Holly Sherman
Sound Designer - Akira Furukawa
DIT & Second Unit DP - Max J. McIver
Boom Operator & Key Grip - Mateo Escobedo
Hair & Makeup - Valeria Franco

Produced by Miguel Orozco · 9 min · English & Spanish with subtitles

Press, festival, and industry inquiries: miggorozco@gmail.com

Follow: @miguelorozco.la

What’s Next

The night is only the beginning.

God Speaks Spanish is a proof of concept for a bilingual drama series set in California’s agricultural heartland, where the Moreno family’s mortuary hides a business far more dangerous than burying the dead. The pilot is written and the series is in development, alongside an audio limited series adaptation.