Love Potions

Emilio Santoyo received a grant to develop Love Potions, a speculative fiction essay film exploring themes of time, space, and desire. The film presents a kaleidoscope of characters, each in different locations and eras, all connected through the transformative power of love potions. With diverse outcomes, including material research, a film script, and an essayistic short film, Love Potions delves into the complex interplay of affection and manipulation. It investigates love as both a form of deception and a chemical reaction, examining various love remedies, from the ancient Mexican use of Toloache (the highly toxic Datura stramonium plant) to contemporary “love drugs” like Ecstasy.

Emilio Santoyo is an Amsterdam-based artist and filmmaker with a BA in Film Studies from CENTRO (Mexico) and an MA in Artistic Research in and through Cinema from the NFA (Netherlands). A Berlinale Talents alumnus, Emilio directed the short film The Perfect Absent (2019) and the feature-length films Ana’s Desire (2019), Silver Heart (co-director, 2023), This Savage Beast (2025), and Vera, Vera, Vera (or The Behaviour of Broken Hearts) (in post-production). He founded Anomia, a film production company and platform for innovative Latin American arthouse cinema, where he collaborates with a group of artists. His work explores themes of love, violence, family, and memory, expanding fiction’s potential in cinema through multidisciplinary production methods. In recent years, he has focused on developing the “New Melodrama,” a practice-based methodology in filmmaking.