With ‘Selena Y Los Dinos,’ Isabel Castro Revisits the Tejano Icon’s Family Ties and Fashion Dreams

Isabel Castro: It’s so surreal and overwhelming, and honestly makes me want to cry every time I think about it. It’s just been so moving seeing people’s reaction videos; I’ve been lying down on the couch all day, compulsively watching all the videos people are posting. It’s very exciting.

What sparked the idea to make a documentary about Selena Quintanilla and her family?

I made a film called Mija that premiered at Sundance in 2022 and tells the story of two Latina women who are trying to make it in the music industry, and simultaneously and kind of cosmically, the Quintanilla family had decided that they were ready to share their archive and tell their story. We were interested in making a documentary, and they had been looking for a director for some time. As a Latina, my work deals a lot with issues around identity and the Latino struggle in the United States, and the family saw my body of work and realized I might be a good fit.

I grew up with Selena. I’m a Mexican immigrant who grew up in a very white community, and never felt totally like I belonged exactly to one culture or another. When I saw the film Selena when I was younger, it really sparked something in me and kind of made me feel proud of being someone who occupied two worlds. Selena really taught me to be unapologetic about that. There’s this great scene in the documentary where she’s kind of tripping over her Spanish, and I just related to that so personally. When I was reached out to about this opportunity, I obviously lost my mind; we went down to Corpus Christi [Texas] to meet the family, and the rest is history, so to speak.

Photo: Courtesy of Netflix

Photo: Courtesy of Netflix

What was it like getting to know the Quintanilla family?

Initially I was overwhelmed and scared, in the way that you would be scared to meet a celebrity. I have such reverence for them that it was daunting to meet them in person. But over the course of two years, me and my producer would go back and forth to Corpus Christi to digitize all the archives. We spent a total of six months in Corpus Christi, so we really got to spend time with the family, and they went from being this incredibly legendary family that is symbolic of so much power in the Latino community to a family that I got to know on a deeply personal level. I was kind of surprised by how personable and humble and generous and warm they were.