Suspiria (1977)

You’re driving home from school with your mom, and you find yourself craving a movie. A particular kind of movie, in fact - an atmospheric horror-thriller about dancers. And then, there it is! You see it! A billboard for Dario Argento’s 1977 classic, Suspiria!

”Mom,” you ask, “can we go see Suspiria?”

”No, honey,” she says, “we have Suspiria at home.”

Albert Acosta is a filmmaker whose work spans commercials, music videos, and photography. His debut narrative film, a short entitled (ha-ha), in which a young man grapples with insecurities about his laugh, is premiering at film festivals around the country (and will be available to the public soon). We chat about the genesis of (ha-ha), juggling many hats as an independent filmmaker, the feature film that never was, telling endearing stories on shoestring budgets, how Acosta’s upbringing and personal experiences find their way into his artistic endeavors, inclusivity in film, and the future of the art form. More about (ha-ha) can be found on Letterboxd and Instagram.

Jeremy: (ha-ha) has been selected for a couple of film festivals. Congrats!

Albert: Thanks. We got into two festivals as of right now. We got into Tallgrass Film Festival and Indie Memphis Film Festival.

Jeremy: When I watched (ha-ha) for the first time, I watched it twice. One time to get the overall sense of it and then again to put some more thorough thoughts together. The first thing I want to talk about is how this came together, and how you met Zander [Torres] and Cesar [Coto] and how the project came to be.

Albert: Zander is really fun to work with and I think it definitely shows through this film, because he’s a funny guy, so I think he was able to embody the character pretty well. I met Zander through a buddy of mine in 2020, and we shot this really micro, two-minute short in the middle of a pandemic, when we were sort of feeling uninspired and unmotivated. We were forcing ourselves to go out there and create and I asked a buddy, “Do you know any actors?” and he sent me a small clip that Zander did.