DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: As a writer and director, I had the need to finish a complete feature film without a budget. Human capacity was all we had in order to accomplish this film, which at the time we started no one realized the power of our only one asset. I created this project because I believe in the actors’ capacity for creation. I had faith in their inspiration which became my own inspiration. I implemented a process in which the first eleven actors would build the characters, develop traits and background information. They even had to name their characters. Based on those characters, they improvised until some stories started to take form. With those short stories, we created basic sketches and formed groups to keep improvising. The result was a main plot, created by a group, which became the main tool I used to write the final screenplay. At the beginning, we had no idea what the story was going to be about so I named the project “Movie Painting”. I thought that it was going to be that type of process where the piece itself would lead us and tell us what to do. It did! It evolved by itself, the subject of animals kept growing and growing until our movie became “Equal Strength” From the first meeting with the actors until my final draft, in the editing room, it took 12 months. Wonderful! We have other coming projects that will be done in a more conventional way, but of course, this one I will always love because if there is one word that describes this experience that is "EMPOWERING"!