In the absence of their mothers, two foster siblings slowly fortify a sisterhood in Los Mosquitos, Nicole Chi’s lushly atmospheric short. Made as part of her graduate studies at the University of Texas at Austin, the film centers on women within the local Honduran community—which Chi has closely worked with in the past—and is largely composed of a cast of non-professional actors. This includes protagonists Abby (Abigail Hernandez), a rebellious 15-year-old, and Nata (Natalia Rodríguez), her younger cousin who’s freshly arrived in the US.
As the girls navigate this stark change in their living situation, tensions naturally arise: Abby begins to envy Nata’s ability to immediately charm the adults around them, while Nata can’t quite grasp why her mother would send her away in the first place. Feelings are inevitably hurt, but the process of healing becomes one of subtle magic.
Los Mosquitos is one of five winners of the 2025 Student Short Film Showcase, a collaborative program from The Gotham, Focus Features and JetBlue that is available to stream via Focus Features’s YouTube channel and offered in the air as part of JetBlue’s in-flight entertainment selection.
Chi responded to a few questions over email, shedding insight on her extensive research process, making room for improvisation on set and the feature film she is currently working on.
All interviews with all of the sixth annual Student Short Film Showcase winners are published here.
Filmmaker: How has attending The University of Texas at Austin shaped your growth as a filmmaker?
Chi: I think studying at UT Austin, and being part of the Austin film community, was very important to me because I found collaborators and support from faculty that have really encouraged me in my filmmaking journey.
I started school and then we got hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, and that was incredibly hard for someone who was just starting to live abroad and getting used to this new environment. It was very challenging to make films like this! But because of it, I found this incredible, generous and kind group of friends who have become my greatest collaborators. They are just people I really admire and respect. I also think that during that time of experimentation, I really found a way of making films that I feel passionate about, and found like-minded people that would join together to make things happen.
Filmmaker: Tell me about the process of enmeshing yourself in the local Honduran community where you found your cast.
Chi: I had met Magda, the older woman in the short, a few years back when I had freshly arrived in Austin through a non-profit domestic worker’s organization called MISMA. We were doing a documentary at that time with the co-writer and producer of Los Mosquitos, Fumiya Hayakawa. We became very involved with the community, and I became friends with all these wonderful women. Since I’m from Costa Rica, we had a lot in common, and they were really kind to invite me to their parties and hang out. I was missing home a lot and through these casual meetings I became curious about how the experience of being in the U.S. was for them.
I became close to Magda, so I formally asked her if I could start visiting her and observing her daily life. I think it was very important to become intentional and clear about what I was doing when I visited them. A little after that, I met Aby and Nata by chance at a family gathering and it all started to come together. I interviewed them as research for the script I ended up writing. I wasn’t sure at first if the film was going to be a documentary or a narrative short, but as I shared more time with them, I realized that a kind of empowerment and freedom could stem from the experience of making this film together.
When we reached pre-production, we held a formal casting call with a mix of professional and natural actors, and I invited the three of them to participate. It all ended up being an acting workshop for them, but it was really key for me as a director to understand how to work with them in this process and through rehearsal.
Filmmaker: I really enjoyed the naturalistic production, make-up and costume design. What was the balance of allowing your cast to represent their own characters versus your crew scouting locations and refining the film’s visual cohesion?
Chi: This was a very important consideration, because their characters represent a mix of their own experiences, other people’s and my own imagination. So it really is a fictional world, but it definitely echoes some of what they have lived through, or people they know. From the get go, it was essential to really separate their actual selves from their characters. It was very intentional that we shot somewhere else and not their actual homes, and that we brought in new clothes for them to wear. We felt the set environment should feel somewhat familiar to them, but actually there had to be details that reminded them these characters were not actually them. The only thing they couldn’t do was stop calling each other by their names, and although we made up new names in rehearsals, as we approached the shoot they asked me to just use their names because it distracted them.
In terms of the visual cohesion, my collaborators immersed themselves in the world too. We did a lot of research and visited many homes of the women from the community to get a sense of how it should feel and what elements were key. I also gave Aby a disposable 35mm camera, and asked her to shoot her daily life. This was part of research for the script too, but I also passed along these stills to get a glimpse of her life and the things she liked to the cinematographer, Carlos Estrada, and the production designer, Teresa Guerrero.
Filmmaker: You said that you didn’t give your lead actresses lines to memorize. How did you encourage improvisation while ensuring the general storyline you conceived would remain intact?
Chi: That was actually so scary for me as a director! Previously, I had shot another short, Comadre, with a similar approach, but it was only one natural actress and it felt more contained in terms of dialogue. So honestly, it was just a lot of rehearsal! Not really for them, but more for me to learn how to direct them. We reviewed the whole story together, but I never wanted them to remember lines so I never gave them the script. I think the magic of working with them was their spontaneity and the way they actually speak and go about themselves, and how they would make whatever was written better and more real.
I carried around my noted script while on set. All my notes came from the rehearsals, but I had very clear notes in bold red to remind myself what the essence of each scene was, like the one thing they did have to do or say to build up the story we are telling.
Aby, Nata and Magda are just such smart actresses, so, ultimately, their trust in the process and their imagination was essential to making all the improvisation work with the story.
Filmmaker: You’re currently working on your feature El Sol del Oro, about a Chinese-Costa Rican, which you’ve teased as a magical realist mystery. How are you preparing to shoot on location? Any other details you can share?
Chi: I’m attempting to follow a similar approach to my shorts in terms of development of the story. I’m doing research and spending time with the community. I’m observing and asking questions, and that helps my process of writing, at the same time that I start looking at possible locations and even cast. Since it’s set in my hometown, I’m observing and thinking about the film all the time, and it really is making me pause and consider life here, the way things have changed and also haven’t since I was young.
Although I am part of the Chinese-Costa Rican community, I’m third generation, so my experiences are different from first and second gens, and even more so in contemporary Costa Rica, so it’s opening up a whole world. I’m very excited about the project, and hoping some funding will come through so I can continue the process as well—and that I can continue to go on about it in this way!