For director Alfonso Pineda Ulloa, it was very easy to agree with helming There Are No Saints by the master storyteller Paul Schrader.

After all, Schrader is the scribe behind great film stories that included Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, First Reformed, and most recently The Card Counter.

As a bonus, the film has an all-star cast with Neal McDonough (Minority Report), Tim Roth (The Hateful Eight), Ron Perlman (Hellboy), Brian Cox (Succession), Shannyn Sossamon (A Knight’s Tale), Tommy Flanagan (Sons of Anarchy), Paz Vega (Spanglish), Karla Souza (How to Get Away with Murder), and José Maria Yazpík  (Polvo, The Obscure Spring) as the Jesuit.

Here is the official synopsis:

Looking to start a new life, a former hitman nicknamed The Jesuit (José Maria Yazpík) is unable to escape the sins of his past. With enemies on both sides of the law, he has nowhere to turn when his only son is kidnapped by a ruthless cartel boss (Ron Perlman). He’ll stop at nothing to save his boy in this gritty action-thriller from the writer of Taxi Driver.

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LRM Online’s Gig Patta chatted with director José Maria Yazpík on why he boarded the project. We discussed balancing the stories on both sides of the borders, José Maria Yazpík in the lead, production settings, and making it a gritty thriller.

José Maria Yazpík is an MFA graduate from the Producer’s Program at the UCLA School of Theater, Film & Television. Also, he participated in the IFP: “Project Involve” mentorship program in 2005, in which he worked with Rodrigo Garci in the feature film Nine Lives. In 2008, he co-wrote and directed the Spanish-language romance/thriller feature film Amor Dolor Y Viceversa (Love, Pain and Vice Versa), which was accepted in the narrative feature competition at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival. He directed the Spanish-language suspense and horror film Spectre which starred Paz Vega, Alfonso Herrera, and Maya Zapata. Most recently, he is attached to the novel adaptation of Elliott Chaze’s Black Wings Has My Angels, with Elijah Wood to produce.

There Are No Saints is now playing in select theaters and available on VOD today.

Watch the exclusive interview with Alfonso Pineda Ulloa below. Let us know what you think of the interview.

Source: LRM Online Exclusive, Paramount Pictures, Saban Films