SXSW 2025: Filmmaker Romina Cenisio Reclaims the Narrative of Red Sands in Her Directorial Debut

Film festivals are a launchpad for the next generation of storytellers—filmmakers with a distinct voice and a bold perspective. For Texas creatives, SXSW is the ultimate stage, a proving ground where fresh talent takes center stage. This year, Romina Cenisio is one of the standout voices making her mark with Red Sands, a striking directorial debut that offers an immersive look at a world rarely captured on screen.

With Red Sands, Romina crafts a vivid portrait of an intergenerational community whose identity is deeply intertwined with the untamed dunes of the Chihuahuan Desert. Set on the border of El Paso, Texas, and Cd. Juárez, Mexico, the film captures the thriving off-road culture that has long provided solace and self-expression for the region’s Mexican-American population. Through striking visuals and intimate storytelling, Red Sands follows past and present figures reflecting on their place within this world, even as looming headlines of danger threaten the very landscape that has shaped them.

Pop Culturalist spoke with Romina Cenisio ahead of Red Sands’ world premiere at SXSW 2025 to discuss the inspiration behind the film, the challenges of capturing this vibrant yet often misrepresented community, and how the project has shaped her journey as a filmmaker.

PC: Your short documentary is making its world premiere at SXSW. Like the subjects in your project, you have close ties to Red Sands. Can you share a bit about your personal connection to the location, the community, and its culture? When did you realize you wanted to make this the focus of your directorial debut?
Romina: I grew up going to Red Sands. My boyfriend used to take me there when I was in high school in the early 2000s—a long time ago. [laughs] I’ve lived in New York since graduating high school, but every time I go home, I make it a point to go back. I can’t leave without spending at least a day in Red Sands. Over the past twenty, twenty-five years, I’ve watched it grow from just a few trucks in the early 2000s to suddenly thousands of people. In talking with everyone, I realized it has become more than just a pastime—it’s an entire identity. It’s a community, a culture they’ve built for themselves.

I’ve wanted to be a filmmaker for quite some time. I was working on and developing different treatments and stories I wanted to tell. But in 2019, when I was home, I thought, “Actually, this is the story right here. This is what I want to tell.” It’s really important to me because it’s never been told before—especially off-roading culture through this lens. It hasn’t been shown before, and I felt this was the more important and powerful story to tell.

PC: Beautifully said. What you’ve done so brilliantly with this documentary is challenge the way this area is often portrayed, revealing its richness in the landscape, the community, and the culture. Since you grew up there but are now based in New York, how has that distance helped shape your perspective on Red Sands? Were there any new discoveries you made in the process of telling this story?
Romina: It’s very interesting being from El Paso and living in New York. There aren’t many of us out here. For a long time, I was literally the only person I knew from El Paso. Only in the past few years have I started to make maybe two or three friends from there. It’s so far removed from the rest of the country and even from the rest of Texas. Austin, Dallas, and Houston are just a few hours from each other, but El Paso is a ten- or eleven-hour drive from Austin. That gives you some perspective on how isolated it is.

Being in New York has given me a new appreciation for how unique it is to be from El Paso. I’ve realized that I’m probably going to spend the rest of my life trying to describe it to people—because nobody’s been there, and you really can’t describe it. It’s given me perspective on the importance of sharing these stories. This is how I can bring people to El Paso, because there’s no real tourism drawing them in.

PC: You can now show them your film. You were also able to capture the vastness of the dunes in such an immersive way. Can you talk a bit about collaborating with your team to achieve that? I do think it’ll make audiences want to experience it for themselves.
Romina: I started going by myself and hired a local videographer to help me capture footage. For someone who hasn’t been there, it can be jarring. It’s very, very difficult to film when there’s this lawlessness around you—there are no rules, and it’s hard to stay focused. Finding the right person was really important.

I ended up working with cinematographer Sean Mattison. He’s been a friend and colleague of mine for almost fifteen years, and he was the perfect person for the project. He totally got it. He felt comfortable in the environment, and he speaks Spanish, which created an immediate comfort level with the people we were filming. All of these things were crucial, especially in such a rugged, adrenaline-fueled setting.

Going into it, we had a lot of discussions about what I wanted to develop, what we wanted to capture, the time of day we needed to shoot, and the types of landscape shots we wanted. We aimed for a juxtaposition—capturing these very peaceful desert moments alongside high-energy, adrenaline-fueled action shots.

PC: You were able to capture that. As you were saying, because this area has grown so much, there are so many colorful personalities that could have been featured in this documentary. How did you go about finding these individuals?
Romina: Ramiro [Bernal], the older gentleman who started it half a century ago, is actually my boyfriend’s dad. It was really funny how that worked out because I was already three-quarters of the way through making the film. I’m still friends with my high school boyfriend, Alejandro, and we were catching up when he said, “That’s so sick. I’m so glad you’re doing this and telling this story.” Then he was like, “You know my dad started this in the ’70s?” And I was like, ‘No, that’s insane!”

I started talking to his dad, and luckily, we’ve always been close since I was a kid. Having him in the documentary became really important to me. Once I found that out, I knew we needed him in the film. He was going to guide us through the history and connect it to the present. It felt very cosmic how that happened.

As for the others—Omar [Torres] and Rosa “Rosey” [Gonzalez]—I knew I wanted a female perspective. That was my number one priority: Who are the women pioneering this space for themselves in an already niche world?

When I started asking around, it became this funny thing—everywhere I went in El Paso for a whole week, people kept saying, “You’ve got to meet Rosey.” And I was like, “Who is this?” Then I met her, and it was even better than I could have hoped for. She was perfect for this.

It was the same with Omar. I met him through friends of friends. I actually interviewed quite a few people before him, but when I met him, we had our first interview on the Fourth of July in 2021, and I immediately knew, “This is my guy.” He totally got it. He represents the present and what’s happening in Red Sands right now. He was so in tune with it. I felt like he, his friends, and his generation are going to lead Red Sands into the future while preserving their traditions.

PC: What a beautiful full-circle moment for you. This film is also such a testament to your storytelling because you’ve brought together individuals with their own unique perspectives, yet you seamlessly weave them together in just twenty minutes. How challenging was it to find that right balance? How were you able to do that?
Romina: Oh my God, it was so hard. It was so hard because we kept thinking, “If we could go back for one more round of filming, this could be a feature, because there was really so much to tell.” The challenge was: How do we connect audiences to this scene and culture in a short film?

After multiple edits, refining the story, and narrowing down the characters, we committed to a twenty-minute short. We told ourselves, “We can do this in twenty minutes.” Getting there was tough, but sometimes, constraints push you to think more creatively and concisely. That’s exactly what happened. If we had more time, maybe we would have gotten a little sidetracked. Those limitations actually helped us connect the dots and ensure everything came together in a cohesive way.

I also wanted to make sure there was space for the audience to absorb the story while keeping the momentum going. The runtime really allowed for that. It also leaves more to be told—this is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s a bit of a cliffhanger in terms of what’s going to happen next within the scene, so that felt right.

PC: The mark of a great short film is one that leaves you wanting more, where it feels like there’s so much story left to be told. You’re also working on a feature script for Red Sands. How does that process compare to working on a documentary? Was a scripted film or project always the plan, or did that idea evolve from your experiences making this project?
Romina: It’s the latter. I always wanted to make a feature narrative, but I had to be very realistic—this is my first film. I had a lot of financial constraints since this was self-funded. I’m a normal person with a normal job, so I knew this would be a patience game. But I wasn’t sure what my next story would be. I have a whole lifetime of stories I want to tell, but this one felt like the most natural place to start.

As the development of this film progressed—even in conversations with my editor and with Sean—we kept saying, “There’s so much more to explore here.” That’s when the script started to take shape. Over the past couple of years, I’ve been working on it slowly but surely, figuring out what to expand on and what story we want to tell that uses Red Sands as the jumping-off point.

PC: With this being your directorial debut, what was the most surprising part of this experience? What did you learn that you’ll bring to the scripted feature?
Romina: This might sound basic or obvious, but you always need more time for filming. Every time we went out there, the best moments happened the longer we were immersed in it. So moving forward, I’ll always try to give myself more time—to develop ideas and to spend more time with my characters. That was my biggest takeaway.

Another key lesson was finding the right team—people who genuinely believe in the project, are excited about it, and want to make the best film possible. Any time you can work with people who have a connection to a place or a story, even if it’s not a direct one but in some way, shape, or form, it adds another layer of authenticity.

PC: Beautifully said. This is undoubtedly a Texas film, and there’s no better place for it to make its world premiere than SXSW. For people outside this world, I don’t think they realize how difficult it is to get a film into a festival—especially one as prestigious as this. How did you celebrate the news?
Romina: I just went to a bar with my friends. It was super exciting. I remember missing the call from the programmer—they had called to congratulate me. My heart started racing because it was my first acceptance, but at the time, I panicked and thought, “Oh no, are they calling to tell me I didn’t get in? I had no idea.” Of course, later my filmmaker friends told me, “Phone calls are always a yes.”

I was probably so flustered on the phone because my heart was pounding—I was so excited. Luckily, I live near a lot of my friends, so we went out and had a little toast to celebrate.

Make sure to follow Romina on Instagram.

Red Sands Screening Times at SXSW:

• Texas Short Program at SXSW Film & TV Theater @ The Hyatt Regency – Mar 7, 2025 (6:30pm — 8:15pm)
• Texas Short Program at Rollins Theatre at The Long Center – Mar 10, 2025 (11:00am — 12:45pm)