Award-winning Mexican filmmaker Isaac Ezban (The Incident, Similars, Parvros) is developing his sixth film, his “most personal project to date,” a time-travel sci-fi road movie.
The project is one of 34 films announced at this year’s Frontière International Co-Production Market at the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal, and forms part of its Officila selection.
Originally written and directed by Ezban and co-written by Cristian Cueva (Mota y Rocanlol), Delivery follows Adan, a lonely truck driver who has been driving a trailer on the Mexican-American border highway for more than 30 years. Adan is obsessed with listening to all the cassettes his father recorded when he was young while traveling.
Unexpectedly fired from the trucking company he’s devoted his life to, he suddenly explodes in anger and decides to steal a truck and drive it as far as the roads will allow, crossing the border into the United States, Canada, and beyond, listening to all his cassettes, his most precious treasure and the only thing that really matters in his life.
At the beginning of his reckless plan, he meets Nokia, a teenager marooned in a border town controlled by a cartel. Nokia also owns the cassette tapes left behind by her family and dreams of crossing the border and reuniting with them. Fate, or perhaps an even more sinister force, will lead them on an unexpected journey with consequences more devastating and complicated than they could have imagined.
“Delivery” is co-produced by Red Elephant Films, run by Ezban and Miriam Mercado, and Sin Sentido Films, founded by producers Alejandra Cárdenas and Felicitas Arce (“My Case Con Un Idiota,” “Mariachi Gringo,” “Jugalemos en El Bosque”).
Importantly, it has just become eligible for Mexico’s Efficin tax incentive, which has so far been 40% funded. The team is aiming to shoot in the second half of 2027 and is looking for a co-producer to fund the remaining funds.
“‘Delivery’ is not only my most personal project to date and the script I have been developing since 2019, but it is also simply my favorite work I have ever written and the film that I believe best represents me. So I’m really excited to have won Mexico’s Efficine Award, which helped make the film a reality, and now to have been selected by Frontier to come pitch the project and find the remaining funding,” Ezban told Variety.
“At first glance, ‘Delivery’ could be described as a detailed road movie or time travel story.”
It’s set along the highway between Mexico and the United States, but it’s much more than that. This is a story about the contrasts of our existence. Planning and spontaneity, daily life and adventure, solitude and socializing, dealing with others and memories, living in the past and living in the present. This is the story of a man who never belonged to his time, and never will.
“And what better setting for a story about the borders we create in our relationships with others than the Mexico-U.S. border itself? At the same time, exploring these new themes that intrigue me.
I continue to explore what has always defined my work: the passage of time. And what’s even better is
The backdrop for a story about time, loneliness, and time paradoxes rather than endless highways? ”
