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Rosario Armas:
La Calaca
Release: Nov 01, 2025
La Calaca is a music—documentary by award-winning filmmaker and composer Julián De La Chica. It follows Mexican mezzo-soprano Rosario Armas and Cuban pianist Ahmed Alom as they navigate themes of death, memory, and cultural identity through the song cycle Canciones de la Muerte, commissioned for Armas and inspired by texts found in the Capela dos Ossos in Évora, Portugal. Set against the backdrop of New York City, the film captures a day in their lives, blending rehearsals, reflections, and performances. La Calaca highlights the resilience of the Latinx spirit and the profound influence of Latin American artists in shaping contemporary music.
La Calaca on IMDb
Official TRAILER
Watch La Calaca on AMAZON PRIME
La Calaca is a luminous and haunting portrait of music as memory, identity, and resistance. Directed with lyrical restraint by award-winning filmmaker and composer Julián De La Chica, this music-documentary traces the artistic pilgrimage of Mexican mezzo-soprano Rosario Armas as she confronts the mysteries of death and heritage through the premiere of Canciones de la Muerte, Op. 20, a work written expressly for her by De La Chica.
Synopsis
La Calaca is an intimate portrait of Mexican mezzo-soprano Rosario Armas as she prepares the premiere of Canciones de la Muerte, Op. 20, a song cycle composed by Julián De La Chica and inspired by texts from Évora’s Capela dos Ossos. Accompanied by her husband, Cuban pianist Ahmed Alom, Rosario navigates themes of grief, memory, and identity—from the traditions of Día de Muertos to the realities of New York’s contemporary music scene. Through rehearsals, conversations, and quiet moments at home, the film reveals how art can transform mourning into tribute and give new voice to the past.
Rosario Armas
Photo by Julián De La Chica
Film NOTES
La Calaca is a quiet, poetic meditation on memory, mortality, and the transformative power of music. Set in New York City, the documentary follows Mexican mezzo-soprano Rosario Armas and Cuban pianist Ahmed Alom as they prepare the premiere recording of Canciones de la Muerte, Op. 20—a song cycle composed by Julián De La Chica and inspired by sacred texts found in Portugal’s Capela dos Ossos.
More than a behind-the-scenes account, the film becomes a personal ritual: an offering to the dead, a celebration of heritage, and a subtle confrontation with grief. Rooted in Día de Muertos tradition but framed within the intimate, day-to-day lives of two artists in the diaspora, La Calaca reflects on how we carry the past, and how music can make that weight bearable—even beautiful.
Shot with restraint and emotional clarity, the film gives space to silence, breath, and reflection—underscoring the sacredness of process and the fragility of life. In documenting this collaboration between two Latinx artists in the heart of New York, La Calaca also affirms the enduring presence and influence of Latin American voices in contemporary classical music.
Rosario Armas
Photo by Julián De La Chica
Ahmed Alom
Photo by Julián De La Chica
The CREW
Written, directed by Julián De La Chica
Produced by Irreverence Group Music
Rosario Armas
Ahmed Alom
Juan Lázaro
& Valentín Peytchinov
The Music
The music of La Calaca is a haunting meditation on life, death, and everything in between, rendered through the evocative performances of mezzo-soprano Rosario Armas and pianist Ahmed Alom. Julián De La Chica’s minimalist compositions—Arias Florentinas, Op. 15 and Canciones de la Muerte, Op. 20—strip away ornamentation to reveal the raw emotional terrain of everyday existence and mortality. Through Armas’s voice, austere yet deeply expressive, and Alom’s restrained, crystalline piano work, these cycles transform philosophical themes into intimate, lived experiences. From overheard conversations in Florence to verses etched in the Capela dos Ossos in Évora, the music finds its pulse in the mundane and its resonance in silence.
De La Chica crafts a sonic world where the sacred and the personal coexist. In Arias Florentinas, the textures are light and conversational, as Armas moves fluidly between the dramatic and the tender. The atmosphere shifts with El Peregrino, the opening of Canciones de la Muerte, plunging the listener into a spectral landscape shaped by weighty chords and relentless momentum. Armas's voice, at times spectral and at others fiercely resolute, becomes a vessel through which fear, remembrance, and transcendence are explored. The closing track—a haunting rendition of La Llorona—serves not just as an homage to Mexican tradition, but as a final whisper from the other side, gently inviting us to reconsider our relationship with death. In La Calaca, music becomes both offering and elegy, a fragile bridge between the visible and the invisible.
Listening to Canciones de la Muerte, Op. 20, No. 4
Mezzo-soprano Rosario Armas brings visceral depth to Canciones de la Muerte, a minimalist work by composer Julián De La Chica. With her commanding yet intimate voice, Armas navigates themes of death, love, and memory through stark, emotionally charged song cycles. Supported by pianist Ahmed Alom’s crystalline textures, her performance becomes the soul of the work—at once raw and ethereal. A vital extension of De La Chica’s artistic language, Canciones de la Muerte is a sonic meditation on mortality, rooted in silence, simplicity, and truth.
Festivals & AWARDS
Official Selection
East Village New York Film Festival
The DIRECTOR
Rosario Armas &
Julián De La Chica
Photo Courtesy by IGM
Praised for his "meditative simplicity" [The New Yorker Magazine] described as "an extraordinarily deep thinker... able to take a listener into mysterious byways using very slender means" [Music Trust], and noted for his "spare and pensive" music [NewSounds], Julián De La Chica is an award—winning Colombian multidisciplinary artist and author (AWA), based in Brooklyn, NY. His influences range from minimalism and post—minimalism to the alternative electronic scene. His work often juxtaposes spiritual reflection with an exploration of humanity’s inner darkness, drawing inspiration from everyday images. His music mixes piano, strings, and classical voices with electronic keyboards and controllers, crossing genres from classical to ambient and electronic music. With a discography that includes six solo albums and over eighteen collaborative projects (between singles and albums), De La Chica’s music has been recorded and performed by artists worldwide and has been featured on Spotify’s Classical New Releases playlist. His work has also premiered at prestigious venues, including Carnegie Hall, the Berliner Philharmoniker, and the Real Academia de Bellas Artes in Madrid.