An American Story: Love Letter to P.R.

First-time filmmaker Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio directed the emotional cinematic storytelling behind his 2025 album DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS (I Should Have Taken More Photos). Known onstage as Bad Bunny, and offstage as Benito, the musician, producer, actor, and now director—famous for poetic love songs and spicy melodic rhythms—created a stunning narrative short film honoring his beautiful and often misunderstood home of Puerto Rico.

The self-titled film preceded the soundtrack and 3X Grammy winning album.

As a musician, Bad Bunny's relevance and attention scale are unique. He has brought a multi-generational divide together around the world. Pretending otherwise would obscure the real lessons here. But what this body of work does is avoid the spectacle and privilege as a global superstar. This film worked because it doesn't feel like a "project" but instead a necessity for the audience to urgently understand the message.

At the same age his father was when he was born, 31 year-old Benito is grappling with growing older while witnessing difficult changes across Puerto Rico—an unincorporated U.S. territory fighting against the erasure of traditional Puerto Rican culture. The DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS film doesn't explain Puerto Rico, it assumes you already get it, building on the parasocial intimacy he has with you as an artist.

The short offers a deeply emotional through-line to the artist's connection with growing up on the small Caribbean island, told through "Señor"—an elderly man reflecting on the lost memories of the island's past amid nostalgia and gentrification, played by legendary 91-year-old actor, filmmaker, and poet Jacobo Morales.

“Señor,” sharing photos with Concho (voiced by Kenneth Canales)—an endangered coquí frog symbolizing native fragility amid cultural erosion reminisces on the past, admitting he wishes he, would’ve taken more photos.

It’s vulnerable, unfiltered, and tender, it’s the story of America in the best ways.

DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS Short Film
The 13-minute Spanish language short film, released January 2, 2025, on YouTube, quickly amassed over 10 million views within weeks, coupled with Bad Bunny's Spotify views, growing to 19.8B streams by year end.

The 13-minute short, co-directed by Benito and Arí Maniel Cruz Suárez, maps nostalgia against erasure—tracking how culture, sound, and bodies are being displaced as Puerto Rican heritage slips away in stark, jarring moments.

In one scene, as Señor descends the mountain toward La Flamboyán Panaderia. American rock blares from a cement house. Further down: a white family, barbecue smoke, country music, a dog chained to a bench. Here, Benito scores the invasion with musical style—rock, then twang—each note feeling more weighty.

But what is really happening is the introduction to the 2019 legislation, Act 60, a combination of tax laws allowing foreign born to reduce their federal income tax as low as 0% to 4% leading to an “influx of the affluent new settlers pushing up home prices and displacing thousands of native Puerto Rican families out of their homeland, catching the attention of many locals, including Bad Bunny.

I met a lot of people. Good people. I traveled to many countries – almost everywhere in the world. But none like Puerto Rico – or what it used to be, Morales reflects at the beginning as he digs up a box from underground.

“There was something here. I’m not sure what. An unbelievable magic. And it’s still here. It’s still here.”

“Señor”, played by Jacobo Morales

The emotional cinematic Spanish language storytelling extends through four music videos—”NUEVAYoL,” “PIToRRO DE COCO,” “EL CLúB,” and “BAILE INoLVIDABLE” (featuring Morales)—plus 17 YouTube visualizers that double as history lessons. Spanish historian Jorell Meléndez-Badillo covers Puerto Rico’s key events from 1508 to today, embedded directly into the streaming experience.

Digital included 17 visualizers — one for each of the album’s tracks — that doubled as history lessons about Puerto Rico.Blue placards overlay the visuals, spotlighting moments like the 1868 Grito de Lares revolt or Lola Rodríguez de Tió’s anthem. Benito didn’t separate the film from the digital rollout—he uses one to deepen the other.

He knew the short would reach some people, but the music would reach everyone. So he embedded the film's urgency—Puerto Rico's erased history, its disappearing culture—into every track's visual component. The audience doesn't have to choose between watching the film or streaming the album because both are layered.

Over 500 million people speak Spanish natively across the Americas—with 450 million+ in Latin America proper and 42–45 million Spanish speakers in the U.S. Puerto Rico is an additional 3 million counted separately and speaks to the pan influence of the beautiful and intentional projects which are the less talked about achievements of the storytelling.

This film intervenes quietly. It doesn't just document what's slipping away—it holds it close, refuses to let go. While policy and capital reshape the island, Benito shares something across generations that is tender: a tribute to the home he loves, remember this, hold this, don't let it disappear. Not filmmaking as protest. Filmmaking as an act of keeping. Of love against loss.

Estimated Project Scope and Spend

• Film: Estimated range: $500K – $1.5M

• Visualizers: The rollout emphasized low-cost, high-impact visuals tied to Puerto Rico's history— that ranged $50K–$200K total, per funded via Rimas Entertainment as a creator-owned company, label and production umbrella.

• Marketing was built on a surprise Sunday release (pre-Three Kings Day).

• Released digitally (YouTube / streaming platforms)

• Functions as:

  • Album narrative extension

  • Cultural artifact

  • Brand-building asset (not ad-monetized in a traditional way)

  • Designed for memory

  • Used digital platforms as premieres, not last resorts

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