Jesus Beltran’s new short film “Motos” follows two immigrant cousins who aren’t perfect — because no one is.
Beltran, a first-generation Mexican-American who is an engineer as well as a filmmaker, despises racist portrayals of immigrants, both in films and real-life, especially as they’re now used to justify ICE raids against people at their homes, jobs and even schools. But he also finds that saintly Hollywood portrayals can feel so false that they don’t help anyone.
“Very few people are saints, but there’s a tendency to portray immigrants as saints in our stories because we’re afraid of being real,” he says. “I get it, opportunistic psychopaths like Hitler and Trump have built entire racist nationalist movements on false narratives of immigrants as criminals, rapists, et cetera, and their acolytes eat it up. It’s depressing but also laughable because it’s clearly false and actually statistically impossible — and all the population and crime data supports that.”
He adds: “But people are stupid — and racist — and unfortunately those qualities often go hand in hand. For me personally as a storyteller, I find the saintly portrayals as false and kowtowing, and they haven’t helped anyway because here we are, right? I just wanna keep it real because I truly believe that the truth always helps lead to the ultimate truth faster.”
“Motos” has a grounded tension from the beginning, when two cousins played by Bobby Soto and Rafael Cobos Delgado start their day at their humble RV in California’s Santa Cruz Mountains, where they eke out a living as loggers.
One is a Mexican-American U.S. citizen, and the other is in debt to a coyote who got him across the border, but both are struggling. Then, on a job, they make a discovery that could change both their lives — or tear them apart.
Beltran, who studied engineering at Stanford and has lived and worked in Silicon Valley for over 25 years, knows the Santa Cruz Mountains well, because he lives there, writing screenplays, mountain biking, and watching movies with his cats.
He has written and directed four award-winning short films that have screened at Sundance, SXSW and over 20 other film festivals, and his screenplay Americano was selected for Sundance’s Producing labs. He co-founded and ran Desmadre.com, an arts and culture site that has earned over 10 million views and 100,000 followers. He is currently at work on his feature debut, There’s No Place, which is now in the financing stages.
“Motos” just played Indianapolis’ Indy Shorts, one of MovieMaker‘s 50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee and 25 Coolest Film Festivals in the World, as part of a strong festival circuit run that is still well underway. We talked with him about empathy, small moments, and saints.
MovieMaker: Can you talk about your background and how you became a filmmaker? I understand you’re simultaneously an engineer for Apple. How do you balance two incredibly difficult careers?
Jesus Beltran: I fell in love with movies early on — watching tons of cable TV, filming with a HI-8 camera and working at a video store by 16. I always wanted to do film, but my genuine love for math and science — and the stability it promised after watching my Mexican immigrant parents struggle financially — led me to study mechanical engineering at Stanford. That choice led me to a successful career in product design and eventually to Apple, where I really enjoyed solving technical problems and working on iconic products.
A few years into my engineering career, I found myself burnt out and needing something more creatively personal, which led me back to filmmaking. I considered but bypassed film school and built my own education through books, classic cinema, and magazines like MovieMaker and its annual “Guide to Moviemaking” issues. In 2006, I made my first serious short film, “The Grass Grows Green,” and somehow that got into Sundance, SXSW and numerous other festivals. That same year, I left Apple to consulting—giving myself the flexibility to pursue filmmaking seriously, even if I definitely wasn’t fully ready.
Over the past two decades, I’ve made four short films, written feature scripts (including one selected for the Sundance Producing Labs), and created hundreds of hours of digital content — all while maintaining a parallel career in engineering. It’s been chaotic and unbalanced, a grind full of late nights and personal tradeoffs, but also joy, collaboration, and growth.
At some point, I ended up back at Apple, where I still work now. I’ve stopped trying to fit into boxes or justify being in two worlds. If anything, I’ve learned that you don’t have to choose between your passions. You just have to find people who get you and keep going, even when it’s hard. I’ve learned that you can be good at more than one thing — but you probably won’t sleep much, and that’s OK, because eventually the grind becomes the joy of it all. That’s where you have those moments of creative fulfillment and beauty. I’m now working on financing my first feature, There’s No Place, with the same creative team that helped me with “Motos” — so we’ll see where this all leads. I’m still having fun and that’s what really matters.
Jesus Beltran on the Timely But Timeless Ideas Between ‘Motos’
MovieMaker: This film is about two cousins, both of whom are struggling and one of whom is undocumented. It’s very timely with the ICE raids on so many people who are just trying to work and get by. What did you want to say with “Motos”?
Jesus Beltran: There have been a number of films, novels, short stories, etc about “the immigrant experience.” Most of them tackle the experience head on — whether it’s a border crossing story, a story about someone trying to gain citizenship, unable to get a job because of their documentation status, being mistreated because of their status, et cetera.
“Motos” isn’t that. It’s really just about two cousins scraping by as loggers in their small corner of the world in the Santa Cruz Mountains. I’m really interested in these small moments in people’s lives where a small personal decision can lead to something life changing or something that defines who you are as a person.
The moment in time we meet the cousins in “Motos” is just like any other day, until they happen upon something out of the ordinary. How they each deal with that situation, and the growth that comes from how they deal with it, is what “Motos” is really about. In that way, the story is universal because it forces you to think, “Wow, what would I do if that were me?” and you are now an immigrant yourself.
Circling back to the framing of your question, the mistreatment of immigrants by the current violent and illegal ICE raids, many of which let’s be clear are really kidnappings by unidentified Trump agents, are possible only because immigrants and people of color in this country have been dehumanized for hundreds of years. Otherwise more people, especially white people with money and power, would be f—ing outraged.
White dominated culture and storytelling has for centuries tried to erase our stories and dehumanize our people. My hope is that in its own small way, “Motos” can be part of the resistance against that.
MovieMaker: There’s a scene where they come across evidence of a terrible crime but never consider reporting it, because they want to avoid trouble. Can you talk about the broader statement that moment makes about the way America often treats undocumented people? It felt like a subtle way of saying that forcing some people off the grid ultimately hurts everyone.
Jesus Beltran: Yeah, it’s a subtle detail that I’m glad you picked up on, but there’s a broader element to it. People of color in general have felt like this forever. People in Black and Latino communities truly do not trust cops or law enforcement in general. Why should they if they’re constantly profiled, harassed and even killed by them?
People have laughed at me when I say I grew up in a police state, but when you’re a dark/non-white young male in America, anything you do that’s even slightly suspect generates heat and beef from cops. I used to get followed by security guards in department stores for no reason other than my looks. So, it’s not just about being undocumented, it’s about being not white, because you can be an undocumented white person here and be totally fine, cops won’t f— with you. So that’s what that’s about.
The character who says he doesn’t want any trouble when they come upon a crime scene is Mexican-American and a citizen — he just doesn’t want any f—in’ beef, for him or his undocumented cousin.
MovieMaker: How did you develop your lead characters?
Jesus Beltran: Although the men in “Motos” may not be saints, they are honest portrayals of men like my father, uncles and others I grew up around in my community. They may be flawed, but they are funny and filled with warmth and love, real bastards that make you laugh and that you want to be around. I love these types of characters — like what Jack Nicholson did in Five Easy Pieces or The Last Detail, but portraying that in film is not easy.
It takes special talent to pull it off, and the lead actors in “Motos,” Bobby Soto and Rafael Cobos Delgado brought so much depth and humanity to their roles that you can’t help but fall in love with them. “Motos” would be nothing without their talent.
MovieMaker: Have you seen the new Superman? There’s an interesting allegory where Superman is trying to be kind of a “model immigrant,” but of course it’s an imperfect parallel to many people’s immigrant experience because he’s a white man. I’m curious what you thought about because the points it makes, because I felt like “Motos” makes similar ones, in a different way.
Jesus Beltran: Yes, I’ve seen it, and I appreciate this as a discussion point regardless of it being an imperfect parallel. James Gunn’s Superman is filled with a lot of allegories about our current political, economic and technological state. He really tried to squeeze it all in and to be honest I was kind of impressed.
When I go into a film like Superman, it’s all about expectations. I’m watching a superhero film, so I try to just go along for the ride and enjoy it. But I was actually moved by the scenes that featured Clark’s parents, and in particular with his father. I believe in the power of film, and if those scenes and framing of Superman can help humanize immigrants for white guys in middle America, I’m all for it and give Gunn a solid fistbump for pulling it off.
Taking a step back, I’m not really a fan of the superhero genre per se but I was a fan of Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy as well as Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy. Gunn and Nolan show that in the right hands, the genre can transcend its tropes and cliches to tell something deep about the human experience and perhaps have us all learn something about ourselves and each other.
Interestingly, they both do it very differently, which is also very cool and exciting as a filmmaker. Maybe I’ll make a superhero movie one day, that’d be cool.
MovieMaker: You shot this in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Can you talk about your connection to them and why you wanted to shoot there?
Jesus Beltran: I’ve lived in the San Francisco Bay area for over 25 years, and most recently in the Santa Cruz Mountains for eight of those years. In 2020, an 86,000 acre wildfire swept through our mountains and destroyed over 1,000 structures with over 700 being single family homes. My home was spared due to the heroic efforts of local fire crews, but I had a lot of neighbors who lost homes, who lost everything.
It was sad to see some people just pack up and go, but there were also stories of resilience and strength in choosing to stay and rebuild. One of the details that emerged for me as our community united to rebuild was that immigrants, in particular Latino men, many of them undocumented, were integral to the rebuilding efforts. There was no way a community who lost that many homes could rebuild without the help of immigrants.
I felt like that was a small but critical detail that many people didn’t really recognize — and that was what initially sparked this story. “What if I tell a small story about some immigrants out here just working?” The beauty and incredible nature of the space was just intrinsic to the story.
Main image: Bobby Soto, left, and Rafael Cobos Delgado in “Motos.”