The Mexican filmmaker Gabriel Herrera has made a series of playful short films over the last two decades. Motorcyclist’s Happiness Won’t Fit Into His Suit, his latest work to date, sees him continue to mine beauty and humor from simple scenarios; in this case, the story of a man who is unwilling to loan his motorcycle to anyone.

Shot in central Mexico, the film uses the lush vegetation of its setting to poke fun at the hubris of the Spanish conquistadores who first trekked across the country’s jungles on colonial expeditions. Herrera’s decision to cast a Mexican man in the role of the conquistador and provide him with a motorbike instead of a horse creates an absurd historical counter-image, reducing the image of the conquistador to that of a greedy jock who chases his own tail in blissful ignorance of his beautiful surroundings.

“Our short film is a small exploration on the meaning of handsomeness, on the relationship between film and handsomeness, handsomeness and colonization, past and present, reality and representation, on the reappropriation of beauty, and on beauty as an act of generosity.” GABRIEL HERRERA

Motorcyclist’s Happiness Won’t Fit Into His Suit was inspired by Herrera’s own sudden run-in with a troop of motorcyclists outside a shopping mall in Poland. “The bikers were going round and round in circles, making a spectacle that no one had asked for,” Herrera recalls. “[They] were exhibiting their own beauty regardless of how much their spectators could really perceive it or understand it.” This encounter between Herrera and the bikers soon became the basis for his film, with the latter’s remote and misunderstood beauty grafted onto his main character’s sensational narcissism.

The Mexican filmmaker Gabriel Herrera studied at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Cinematográficas in Mexico City and at the Polish National Film School in Łódź. His short films and experimental videos have screened at film festivals across the globe, including Berlinale, Sundance and TIFF. He is now developing his first feature film.

Text written by Nicolas Pedrero-Setzer.