Mariel Cortés is a Mexican director. Her fashion short film AMORA exists as a tribute to the various ghosts that we carry deep within. Mariel is aware that this may come across as a harrowing concept, but insists through AMORA that if one learns how to live with these haunting remnants, this energy can be transformed into light. This fashion short’s aesthetic exudes radiance alongside its assessment of self hood, depicting a floral-human hybrid creature softly interacting with the protagonist, somewhat like a shadow or extension of self. This could suggest companionship within one’s own mind. The images fall into their own category of eerie horror that Mariel paints as heartfelt and moving rather than disturbing. AMORA details the complexity of human emotion and the re-learned mechanisms of survival in the different stages of life.

Mariel Cortés “This project for me was a way of expressing myself in every way, I wanted to show in a simple piece how I have lived with my apparently dark side, but the surprising thing was that everyone in the crew identified so much that I didn't have to explain too much , we all felt it in a very similar way. In the end, it was like everyone on set was reconciling with their inner ghosts.

I usually direct commercials for a living, so what I really wanted in this film was to have complete creative freedom, the goal was to explore my personal style and to reflect how those ghosts are also part of our human complexity."