When Cinema Meets Psychology: Domestic Animals and the Therapeutic Diversity Group

Cinema has always been most powerful when it leaves the screen and enters the room. When it becomes something people need to talk about. April 11th was one of those nights.

Sandy Siquier and I had the privilege of being invited by Grupo de la Diversidad Terapéutica (Therapeutic Diversity Group), a Spanish-speaking collective of mental health professionals committed to fostering dialogue around trauma, mental health, and social responsibility, to screen our film Domestic Animals and participate in a panel discussion with their community in Miami. The event was hosted by Lugar Común (Common Place), a Miami-based nonprofit founded by Garcilaso Pumar, photographer and literary editor, and Vyana Rodriguez, educator, theater director, and Director of Education at Miami New Drama. Together they have built something rare: a genuinely independent cultural space where conversations like this one can happen.

The panel in full dialogue with the audience at Lugar Común.

The panel was extraordinary. Sineth Melinkoff, the driving force behind this event, is a clinical psychologist and couples therapist with over 20 years of experience and the founder of the therapist network that gave birth to Grupo de la Diversidad Terapéutica. Sodely Páez brings over 30 years of psychoanalytic practice, with membership in the Caracas Psychoanalytic Society, focusing on trauma, family conflicts, and gender studies. And Leonardo Padrón, Venezuela's most celebrated screenwriter, who brought a literary and narrative perspective to the conversation.

Sandy Siquier addresses the audience during the panel Q&A

What followed the screening was a dialogue that ran for an hour and a half. The film was examined from multiple perspectives simultaneously: clinical, narrative, cultural, and communal. Comments and questions came from mental health professionals and from the general public. People spoke from their own experience. The panelists listened, pushed back, and built on each other. It was exactly the kind of conversation that Domestic Animals was made to be part of.

Alex Mendez Giner speaks during the panel conversation

That is the thing about this film. Sandy and I have always understood it as a resource as much as a work of art. It is meant to be used. It is meant to open rooms. Watching it in Spanish, with an audience of people who have dedicated their lives to understanding the complexity of human behavior, was something I will not forget.

Sineth Melinkoff closes the evening alongside Alex Mendez Giner and Sandy Siquier

Thank you to Grupo de la Diversidad Terapéutica for the invitation and for the care with which they built this event. Thank you to Garcilaso and Vyana for making Lugar Común the kind of space where this work can find its audience. Thank you to Sineth, Sodely, and Leonardo for the generosity of their engagement. Thank you to Rincón Asturiano and Tapas de Rosa for the food and wine that brought warmth to the evening. And thank you to every person in that room who stayed, who asked, who shared.

After the screening. From left: Garcilaso Pumar, Alex Mendez Giner, Sandy Siquier, Sodely Páez, Leonardo Padrón, and Sineth Melinkoff

Domestic Animals continues to travel. Every conversation like this one is the reason we made it.

More soon.

Alex