Sometimes, a filmmaker just knows when a subject is right. For Roger Ross Williams it was the day he first encountered the Mexican wrestler Saúl Armendáriz, better known by his ring name, Cassandro. ‘I fell in love with Cassandro the minute I met him,’ recalls Williams, when Total Film hooks up with him over video chat.
At the time, Williams was filming footage for The Man Without a Mask, a 2016 non-fiction short for The New Yorker, inspired by William Finnegan’s portrait of Cassandro that appeared in the magazine two years earlier. ‘Actually, the first day shooting with Cassandro… I went out that night with my crew, we were at a tequila bar. I remember that moment. And I said, “This is going to be my first scripted film.”’
In the unique, colourful but very macho world of lucha libre wrestling, Cassandro was a revolution. In the ring, the openly gay Armendáriz was a self-styled – a breed of wrestler known for their extravagant, outlandish