Behind the mask: Oscar-winning director Roger Ross Williams at the helm of emotion-driven 'Cassandro'

Sep. 14—Roger Ross Williams knew that the border wall between the United States and Mexico was meant to divide people.

When he began filming "Cassandro" in El Paso, it was certain that the two communities rely on each other.

"It blew my mind," he says. "We had members of the crew who lived in Juárez coming to work. The wall was built to divide, but it unites these people even more."

The Oscar-winning director is at the helm of the upcoming film, "Cassandro," which has a limited run in theaters beginning Friday, Sept. 15, before heading to Prime Video on Sept. 22.

"Cassandro" tells the story of Saúl Armendáriz, played by Gael García Bernal, who starts competing in the macho world of Mexican lucha libre wrestling — a place where he's always cast as the runt.

After he meets Sabrina, played by Roberta Colindrez, Saúl gains not only a professional trainer but also a friend who helps him create a new character in the ring. Together they debut "Cassandro," a radical subversion of lucha libre's stereotypical role known as the Exótico. Flamboyant and powerful, Cassandro turns lucha libre on its head. But Cassandro also upends Saúl's own life, throwing into tumult his relationships with his mother Yocasta, his secret lover Gerardo, and his absent father Eduardo.

Williams began the journey to "Cassandro" about five years ago when he directed the documentary, "The Man Without a Mask," which told Cassandro's story.

He wasn't versed in lucha libre or the cultural significance it holds.

"With my crew, I flew down to El Paso, Texas, and met Cassandro," Ross says. "From the first day, I was just blown away by his inner spirit and joy. He has an aura, a light; he is filled with this positivity and has struggled so much, and I was very moved. That night in El Paso, we went to a tequila bar after shooting, and I told them, 'This is my first fiction film.' Also, from the beginning as we were writing the script, I thought only one person could play Cassandro, and that was Gael García Bernal."

After realizing this, Ross searched to connect with García Bernal — which eventually happened.

"It was meant to be," he says with a laugh. "I pursued him for a year. He's the only one that could capture Cassandro's essence because it wasn't only a deep story, but a physical one."

When production began, so did the pandemic and new protocols for shooting.

Because Cassandro is from El Paso, the production needed to take place there.

Ross says it was important because the film is Cassandro's story, but it's also a border story.

"We shot in this house in the backyard, and you can see the trucks going by," he says of the traffic on the Border Highway in El Paso. "You can see these two worlds coming together."

Ross says building the script was a long and interesting process as he and co-writer David Teague went through.

"As a documentarian, I wanted to stay true to the real Cassandro, and his story was so complex, complicated, and fascinating, with so many twists and turns that we had to pare it down," he says. "The story had everything in it, including, of course, the crazy world of lucha libre. Cassandro went through rejection for so many years and had this sort of need to prove himself to the world. He has something to prove to everyone. And he loses everything and realizes that it's serving a bigger purpose of being inspiring to young gay kids, giving him much more satisfaction and much more purpose in life than serving himself."

As the film begins to be seen by audiences, Ross has one hope.

"I hope people walk out of the theater, totally transformed and inspired," he says. "Nowadays, in life, we all put on these masks, you know, and say how wonderful our lives are on social media. I feel like we're more divided than ever. This is a film about bringing people together and about breaking down those barriers, about taking off those masks and being who you are. That's the beauty of it."