Before We Forget: Di Pace & Estrada on Personal Story, Lear & More

Posted in: Exclusive, Interview, Movies | Tagged: Before We Forget

Before We Forget: Di Pace & Estrada on Personal Story, Lear & More

Before We Forget director-writers Juan Pablo Di Pace and Andres Pepe Estrada spoke with us on crafting a personal journey to film, and more.

Published Sat, 14 Nov 2026 17:46:08 -0600
by Tom Chang
|
Comments

Article Summary

• Before We Forget directors Juan Pablo Di Pace and Andres Pepe Estrada reveal the real-life story behind the film.
• The filmmaking duo discuss writing, directing, editing, and how they split creative duties on Before We Forget.
• Di Pace and Estrada break down the film’s challenging casting process and the most difficult scene to bring to screen.
• Before We Forget also earned support from Norman Lear, who joined as executive producer after connecting with the script.

Juan Pablo Di Pace is as talented and versatile as they come, considering he made his debut in the Eric Prydz chart-topping hit and music video, Call on Me, in 2004, becoming a regular presence on screen on TV and film with his memorable appearance in the Universal rom-com musical Mamma Mia (2008), the TNT Dallas reboot, NBC's A.D. The Bible Continues, ABC's Dancing with the Stars, and Netflix's Fuller House. While Di Pace focused on acting, his writing partner and co-director Andrés Pepe Estrada focused on editing, with his more memorable works on Murder Me, Monster (2018), The Tale of King Crab (2021), and Argentina, 1985 (2022). While promoting his latest semi-biographical film in Giant Pictures & Momento's Before We Forget, Di Pace and Estrada spoke to Bleeding Cool about sharing creative duties, extensive casting, how late legendary TV pioneer Norman Lear became an executive producer, and the personal story that inspired the film. The film follows an Argentinian filmmaker struggling to finish a movie about his unrequited first love who receives an unexpected invitation to reconstruct his memories, revisit his past, and perhaps even find a new ending to his story.

Before We Forget Writer-Directors Juan Pablo Di Pace and Andrés Pepe Estrada on Capturing Their Personal Journey on Film

Bleeding Cool: What's the inspiration behind 'Before We Forget?'

Di Pace: Real life, real stuff. Andrés and I have been friends for the longest time, since 1995 or 96. We were in school, and we connected over film and filmmaking back then at age, what is it, 12, 13?

Estrada: 13, yeah.

Di Pace: We started by literally making short films and things, and so, even though we went our individual ways, him more on the side of editing and me on the side of acting- it was time for us to get our heads together and make a film. This story is one that we both lived, so it's based on a real event that happened.

What did you like about working together as creative partners?

Estrada: I guess that it's very comfortable to work with each other, because we know each other so well, so when we work, we are at the point where we can finish each other's sentences, many times. So that speeds up a lot of the work, and also, as we were saying in the previous question, mainly, when you're doing your first feature, maybe it's better to talk about something you know. In this case, if we were talking about something that really happened and that both of us know, because we both were there, it was very important for us to have our minds on something that we really know and that we already talked about many times.

How did the responsibilities divide, since you guys are both writing and directing? Juan, was it difficult just kind of doing the multiple hats, just acting, directing, and writing? Or did you think about just having Andres do all the directing? How did that break down?

Di Pace: No, I didn't find it hard at all, actually. It was surprisingly, really comfortable, because the movie was obviously created through my decision first, and then I told Andres, "What do you think? Do you want to come on board?" When you have a clear idea, but also a clear memory of what, or at least what you would like to use from memory, then it's as if you have the whole picture in your head.

It wasn't difficult to step into the directing, and then of course, once you shot it, you want to also play with the edit, so Andres was very kind in letting me also co-edit, because this is his world, and yet, it felt very natural. We always had a great relationship in the edit, because, for example, he would go and do his version, and I would go into my version of the exact same scene. We would then show each other's versions, and then we would come up with a third, which was like the best bits of both.

Estrada: And a fourth.

Di Pace: When I was on screen, I mean, Andres, I'm sure you have more to say than me, but I was so involved through every single thing that was going on set in front of and after that, I told Andres, "When I'm acting, I just want to be acting. I'm not going to go behind the monitor and check my performance; you take the lead," and that was a really great action, but it was the only time that I was relaxing when I was acting [both laugh].

Estrada: Because in those moments you were only doing what you normally do. No!

The talent that you guys have, how did they help you through the shoot, especially since this guy's feature directorial debut? How did the talented ensemble cast around you like help through you guys, through your scenes and doing the project?

Di Pace: Yeah, we were incredibly lucky that we got incredible, beautiful, kind, and generous actors.

Estrada: The casting process was a long one.

Di Pace: It was long because, as you've seen in the movie, you have two versions of almost every character, so we had to cast the teenage version and the 40-something version, and that was a long process, and also from different countries. There were characters from Norway, characters from Buenos Aires…even in the college, there were kids from maybe 25 different countries? So, it was very complicated. It took a while, but then I am incredibly proud of the cast.

Amanda Lenker Doyle, our casting director, and Pablo Lapa in Buenos Aires both did fantastic. They found…one each actually. One found Oscar Morgan, who plays Young Alex, and the other one found Santiago Madrussan, who plays small Young Matias. This movie wouldn't exist without those two. I mean, really, and every single person and choice in the…I am particularly glad this is maybe controversial. I'm particularly glad that we didn't go for stars and we went for the exact people that were the right people for the movie. We didn't have constraints on having to cast names, and that doesn't happen all the time, but I'm very proud of every single person.

Was there a particular scene that might have been difficult to shoot that stands out among all of them?

Estrada: Oh, yeah, the car scene is the most difficult in the movie, because it's something that really happened to Juan Pablo, very similar to what happened in reality. It was quite difficult to find that sweet spot where it's near enough to reality, but far enough to be fictional. Some kind of fiction where you can work with it only because you need to. I mean, being so close to things that really happened, you must find that distance also, to be able to work from that. To be able to find the tools to make the storytelling, to find how that works as a story, as a tale, and not only as something that is a release of emotions, and it was very difficult to translate that and give that to actors who not necessarily understand really what was happening originally. Also, that was a scene that we must repeat many times. There were many takes of that, so it was a long day and a long editing process also for that scene.

How did you get the attention of Norman Lear and have him become an executive producer on this project?

Di Pace: He loved the script. It was through Brent Miller, who was his partner for, I think, 25 years before Norman passed. First, Brent loved the script, and then he shared it with Norman, and they came on board as executive producers. They were there from before the shoot until the last cut. Yeah, [we were] very fortunate, because this is a giant, and it was a privilege, really. I really loved having his presence in the film for sure. This was one of the last projects that he did before he passed and I think the last movie he watched in the cinema.

Before We Forget, which also stars August Wittgenstein, Araceli González, Marta Beatriz Maineri, Fabián Mazzei, Sarah Parish, Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson, Julia Bender, Krista Kosonen, Tomás Kirzner, Juan Cruz Márquez de la Serna, Vittorio Di Pace, Lini Evans, Agustina Lecouna, and Joaquín Gaitan, is available on digital and streaming.

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!