A Mexican film crew has pulled science fiction into near space with “Ground Control,” a 16-minute short that incorporates real images from the mesosphere roughly 80 kilometers (50 miles) above Earth.
As it begins a run on the international festival circuit, the production is being billed as the first Mexican short film to use original imagery shot in space.
Filmmakers from Monterrey-based WHA Productions partnered with aerospace video company BXPACE to obtain about 60 seconds of footage from the mesosphere, a rarely explored atmospheric layer typically reached only by rockets.
The team launched a camera module on a large helium balloon from the outskirts of Monterrey — near the highway to Piedras Negras — then tracked it by GPS as the balloon burst and the payload fell back to Earth by parachute.
The balloon needed to have the proper weight and size to reach its destination and descend via parachute — all the while avoiding interfering with airplanes.
The space scenes they captured are without actors, appearing in the film simply as real images shot in the mesosphere.
“Ground Control” is a fictional film — with its title in English and its dialogue in Spanish — that centers on Isaac, a 60-year-old aerospace engineer and astronaut on the verge of retirement.
Haunted by unfulfilled ambitions to explore space, he reaches the final selection phase for a mission — but his broken relationship with his daughter and other challenges impact his long-held dream.
The project was developed over three years by producer and co-director Werner Heinze Amador of San Luis Potosí, who founded WHA Productions in 2021 to pursue visually ambitious, emotionally focused work.
He co-directs “Ground Control” with Hugo Montes de Oca of Monterrey and Mauricio Ramos Figueroa of Guadalajara, as part of a new wave of Mexican filmmakers seeking to expand the country’s presence in science fiction.
The project began as a thesis project at the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM).
“From the beginning, we wanted to do something with a space theme,” Heinze Amador told the newspaper El Universal. “The initial idea was to shoot with a green screen, the traditional way, but by chance we came across a space video agency in Monterrey. We approached them, they believed in the story, and we put everything together.”
The filmmakers say their film will be heading to festivals including Morelia, Sundance, Toronto and Sitges (Spain).
“In Mexico, we consume a lot of science fiction, but we don’t make it because it’s very expensive,” Heinze Amador said. “It’s good to realize that, with things like this, it can be done.”
With reports from El Universal and El Heraldo
