Blog Post #245: My 'A Communist Brainwashed My Daughter' Review!

During my time in film school at University Central Florida in Orlando, I met a fellow film student who shared a short film he'd made in high school on his personal website. It was a roughly 7-minute film inspired by the Biblical story of Noah featuring crude miniature and greenscreen effects all set to a selection of John Williams music and The Doors' "Riders on the Storm". In discussion with my colleague about his short film, I experienced a mild epiphany: No matter how small the budget or rudimentary the technique, this novice short film resulted in 7 minutes of engagement on my part; not to mention the time spent and mental space occupied in thinking about and discussing the short film with my friend and others. Later, I would extrapolate this peculiar equation to accommodate whole feature-length films; essentially postulating that a low-budget feature film which is sufficiently captivating carries the same basic weight in time and mental processing as a far more expensive one. And throughout my film school experience, my experience with many films on the lower end of the budgetary spectrum affirmed the truth of this curious idea of mine.

I met filmmaker Daniel Lago, along with his long-time collaborator (and filmmaker in his own right) Manuel Delgadillo, at a social event organized by Miami Film Lab in the fall of 2023. Lago was the portrait of confidence and pride owing to the imminent completion of his debut feature film A Communist Brainwashed My Daughter, a film he wrote, produced, directed, shot, acted, edited and scored almost entirely single-handedly on a shoestring budget. To say the least, I was instantly charmed!

Lago began filmmaking in his early adolescence with the passion of a generalist intent on performing as many of the technical roles as he could himself. My own experience as a young filmmaker was uncannily similar. Seeing the medium as a fundamentally mechanical contraption involving a vast array of controls to manipulate in order to realize an experience for an audience, there was much to grapple with in our beloved art form as a young person. For my part, it was addictive and all-consuming but a manageable passion as a youth owing to the abundance of free time and relative lack of adult responsibilities at the time. I imagine, however, if Lago and I had developed an interest in filmmaking later in life as adults, we would have likely succumbed to the tragic but widely accepted custom of becoming a specialist in one or two areas at most and accepting work with only tenuous attachment to the fundamental creative center of a given production. The broader film industry forgets that the individual talent of fully invested auteurs, innovators and magicians (e.g., Georges Melies, the Lumiere brothers, Charlie Chaplin, D.W. Griffith, etc.) popularized cinema; not a corporate committee and their compartmentalized subordinates.

I attended the premiere of Lago's A Communist Brainwashed My Daughter at Miami Film Festival in the spring of 2024. The screening was well-attended and its brand of irreverent, Miami-flavored satire elicited ample laughs and chuckles from the audience. In the spring of 2025, a leaner cut of the film was played at a special daytime screening organized by Miami Film Lab celebrating Miami-made films which I also attended.

A Communist Brainwashed My Daughter is composed of a series of vignettes consisting of three principal threads: The first follows Mr. Ramos (Daniel Lago), a high school science teacher, who struggles to raise environmental conscientiousness among his brood of seemingly apathetic students; the second revolves around escalating interpersonal conflict between a group of the youngsters; and the third involves the misadventures of Ediberto (Manuel Delgadillo), a landscaper and parent of one of Mr. Ramos' students. The multiple threads are intercut throughout the film and the comic proceedings culminate in a riotous showdown between Mr. Ramos and the decidedly un-environmentally sympathetic Ediberto.

The film is replete with spirited comedic performances from the lead adult actors and the supporting teenagers. The dialogue and nonverbal expression have a striking naturalism far, far from the poise of scripted words and verbatim delivery. Memorable sections of the film include an early scene in which Mr. Ramos addresses his students with the fervor of an activist but the timing and temperament of a stand-up comedian. Another involves Ediberto's run-in with a lascivious admirer's son, who may or may not be high on a particular substance. But, amid so much levity, there's an outstandingly poignant moment (only a few seconds long) when one of Mr. Ramos' students (Amy Doval) pauses amid the surrounding chaos of an impromptu field trip to look at her teacher with full recognition of his exhausting desperation to make a difference in his students' lives. A sterling example of expertly handled dramatic contrast!

...

What do we do? Where do we go? We, consummate filmmakers who are so eager to mount feature-length film productions on our own and make all the countless creative decisions invited upon them? We, who are so ready to sacrifice and make vulnerable so much of ourselves in service of an art form unmatched in universal appeal and affection? There is so much dormant talent in every city in this country ready to burden themselves with this demanding work but incapable of doing so in their own communities; for the people they know and who know them. We, ready dreamers and toilers, should at least have that dignity.

A simple deduction from my opening paragraph suggests that it is irrelevant how much a film costs to produce if it engages an audience and holds their interest for a given runtime. Regrettably, our mega-dominant corporate overlords have cast the thickest wool over our eyes and compelled us to believe that legitimacy in cinema comes only at the cost of millions of dollars, even hundreds of thousands of dollars, and with the involvement of talent we'll never meet or share a word with. This is a monstrous falsity despite how many of our cultural institutions' gatekeepers parrot its venom! There is a local, sustainable, bottom-up alternative and its practitioners will have their time in the sun - even if it has to be among the ruins of a fallen, disgraced empire...

Unfortunately, A Communist Brainwashed My Daughter is not yet available on any streaming services but I hope that changes at some point. Find its trailer below: