Who's Watching? with Rodolfo Castillo-Morales

Who’s Watching? is a recurring series on For Immediate Release. We spend so much time wondering what film programmers are looking for — this is where I turn the camera around.

His name is Rodolfo Castillo-Morales, but everybody calls him Fito. I met him at the 2025 Guadalajara International Film Festival, where I was an industry guest at the DocuLab he helped build. FICG has one of the most genuinely engaged audiences I’ve encountered at a film festival — almost everything was sold out. The kind of turnout that makes you remember why any of this matters. That doesn’t happen by accident. It takes years of thoughtful programming and a real belief in the audience. Gracias, Fito!

The film that made me want to work in festivals was… Los Ladrones Viejos (The Old Thieves: The Legends from Artegio) by Everardo González.

If I could only program one genre for the rest of my life… creative documentary

The filmmaker I'd most want to have a drink with after their Q&A (dead or alive) is… Andrei Tarkovsky

Deep in selection season, the film that makes it all worth it is the one that… surprises you, which you didn’t have in mind, and it appears to move you beyond the boundaries of what you’ve been watching and resignifies the way you relate to the theme and documentary cinema itself, being either a very simple or quite complicated narrative.

The best audience reaction I've ever witnessed at a screening was… a screening in Cuba; they were talking to the characters, laughing and singing along with the soundtrack.

What do filmmakers misunderstand most about how festival programming works?

Almost everything. I think there’s a big gap that comes from the formative stages and education in filmmaking, because normally the focus is on the creative side. There are very few informative programmes to close the gap and get to know how the programmers and curators face and organise the programmes, style, narrative, ideas, etc.

Is there a film you rejected that still haunts you?

Yes, many… but not in a bad way, because in a way, our task is to say no, but I’ve always recognised the effort behind a film; more than a film, it’s the process that haunts me.

I knew I was in the right job when… I saw an old lady who had never watched a documentary in a cinema cry with joy because of a film that we programmed.

Anything you’d like filmmakers — or FIR readers — to know?

Support the small cinemas, watch local and regional films, attend film festivals and open up your mind to different expressions, countries and cultures, because cinema (especially documentary cinema) is the window to understand our present, and will preserve the memory of our time in the future.

Rodolfo Castillo-Morales
Rodolfo Castillo-Morales is a Mexican filmmaker and programmer. He has participated in several fiction and short films as well as produced, written, directed, and photographed documentary features and series, working with broadcasters and producers from Mexico, Spain, Serbia, El Salvador, Argentina, Japan, and more. He was a programmer at Mexico City’s documentary film festival DocsMX, co-creator of Plataforma MX, a specialized workshop for Mexican filmmakers, with DocsMX, as well as the general coordinator of DocsLab. He was the Programming Director of the Guadalajara International Film Festival (FICG) and the Guadalajara Cinematheque, as well as general coordinator of DocuLab: documentary laboratory. He’s filming his fourth feature and is in post-production on a short film.

Follow Rodolfo on Instagram @fito_castillo_morales_7 or connect on LinkedIn

p.s. — I also make hats for film people. Shop at filmllc.co

If you want to go deeper on how to navigate the festival world — strategy, submissions, programming decisions, all of it — I’m writing a guide. Pre-order it here.