hey! nice to e-meet you! a little bit about me: my name is Ericka (but i pretty much go by “eri”), i’m a mexican-british writer/director, actress, and poet originally from a cool little city in mexico called “cuernavaca”, now living in los angeles. i got a Bachelor’s Degree in tv and film production from the University of Southern California in 2019 (fight on, obviously!). during my time at USC, i directed a few short films– raging from dramedies to magical realism– one of these was “il breakup” which is an italian dramedy that won “best short” at the Italian Cinema Style Film Festival, and ended up in me and my producer traveling to Rome and visiting the studio that sponsored the festival (you might find some of the photos from this trip in my site). at USC, i also produced several short films (including undergraduate and graduate thesis films) which taught me the foundations of independent filmmaking, and were also many of the opportunities where i connected with amazing filmmakers i now get to call my friends and frequent collaborators.
but what do i care about?? growing up in mexico, i nurtured a deep connection to nature thanks to my British grandmother who would plan these extraordinary family trips in deserted parts of the country, where i feel like my family and i literally found magic in nature since a young age. i grew up finding hiking paths to places such as Quetzalcoatl’s lagoon (where he was baptized– or at least this is what i was told??), traveling through ceilings made out of giant spiderwebs to visiting mountains where ancient witchcraft happened, or getting lost in the depths of nature with my family and saved by a group of wild cows and a random guy with a machete. i am literally not making any of that up, y’all– nature always surprises you. i think that experiences like these have pushed me to always try to find “the extraordinary in the ordinary”, and this is something i carry with me in the stories i tell/want to be part of.
another bit about me (aside from filmmaking and acting) is that i am also a poet. i would say i’m a hopeless romantic, definitely. my latest poetry book “Good Souls Make Mistakes” explores the journey of giving yourself to love, unabashedly; unloving and asking for them to leave the key on their way out; and finding yourself once again (kind of like, giving yourself another chance at love, and loving innocently). i am also a big fan of spoken word poetry, so if you don’t see me writing poetry at a cafe or past midnight at a club in west hollywood (just trying to get out of my comfort zone), you might see me performing at Da Poetry Lounge.
currently i am acting/directing and showrunning a dope queer magical realism web series called “if the world was ending” (all episodes from Season 1 are up on youtube) that i have been working on since 2021 with a bunch of pretty awesome people (many of them trojans… obviously). i am also working on developing a half-hour pilot based on the web series. and working on a short documentary (fiscally sponsored by Film Independent) called “the cleaning lady” that follows the journey of a dear mother who immigrated from mexico to the US over a decade ago, crossing the border and leaving her kids back in her motherland, to be able to provide them with a better life. i am currently in post-production on this project.