The first time I entered a vault holding the Quintanilla family’s archive, I just stood there, overwhelmed by the magnitude of what had been preserved. Up until that point, I wasn’t sure how to approach a story as known and beloved as that of Selena Quintanilla. But in that vault, I realized my documentary film, “Selena y Los Dinos,” would be best told through the intimacy the family had been recording all along — hours of footage of them on the road, family meals, backstage footage of them getting ready, Selena practicing for her performances.
Over the course of several years, I worked closely with the Quintanillas to reassemble a family history that is as much about music as it is about a family’s love and loss. The process was meticulous and emotional — unearthing forgotten tapes, restoring brittle footage and returning, again and again, to the question of authorship. How do you tell a story that the world thinks it already knows? How do you preserve its truth against decades of mythmaking?
During that process, I took Polaroids in moments of calm while reviewing the Quintanillas’ archive and conducting their interviews. It’s something that I do in most of my productions — a way for me to remember how those moments felt — a tangible reminder of a time and place.
This conversation with Suzette Quintanilla— Selena’s older sister, the band’s drummer and now the CEO of Q-Productions — emerged from our shared process of excavation. We spoke about the decision to open the family’s private archive and the weight of legacy. What follows is not just a conversation about the film, but about the ways we keep someone alive through image and sound.
From left to right: A painting of Selena at the museum; Suzette Quintanilla at her parents’ home.
Isabel Castro: Let’s start at the beginning. You are the author of a lot of these videos, you were behind the camera. What was it like for you to share that archive with new people?
Suzette Quintanilla: Nervous. It did feel odd because I had never shared it. It’s weird because I also felt like I was ready to do it.
I’m gonna go back [in time]. I bought Selena a makeup case. It was big and chunky — because she would always forget her makeup whenever we were flying on the plane or whatever. So I had given her that, and my mom ended up giving it back to me after Sister passed away. That was my go-to after she died. Every week, I kept it upstairs in our house, in my office. I would just go to it and cry my ass off, like uncontrollably.
She used to wear Boucheron at the time when she passed and she had a bottle in there. Every time I’d open [the case], it smelled like her. I didn’t want to share that with anybody. [It] was my time with her. It’s hard to explain.
And a lot of people would ask about it, because they knew that she always carried it. Fans would ask about it. I put it in the [Selena] museum about five years ago, right after we reopened from COVID. I thought, “OK, I’m ready to part with it now.”
Same thing with the film. The archival has always been there. I know it’s been there. Not that I thought about it a lot, I just knew it was there, and I felt comfortable that it was there. I never really thought, “Oh I’m gonna gatekeep this because one day I’m going to make a documentary.” It never crossed my mind to do that early on. That thought process came about maybe four or five years ago. But I’m not gonna lie, I was very nervous having you guys in the vault.
IC: I just want people to understand that there are literally floor-to-ceiling bookcases where there are hundreds of VHS tapes and hundreds of Betacams. When Daniel, the producer, and I were led into the vault with Suzette, I almost had a heart attack. That was really the moment where I was like, “I want to do this so badly.”
SQ: Was that like being a kid in a candy store?
IC: Oh, my God. A hundred percent. But my memory of it is like opening a door and it’s just light emanating. To be totally frank, up until that point, I was thinking, “How are we gonna tell this story in a different way? Like how am I gonna be able to pull that off?”
SQ: Really?
IC: Yeah, I was scared. And then I saw this archive, and I said, forget about it. Just showing this stuff immediately is going to make it different.
SQ: You felt overwhelmed, I’m sure.
IC: Exactly. I felt overwhelmed because up until that point I didn’t know if I was going to pull this off. I had pre-project jitters. It’s just so much responsibility. It’s like looking up at a huge mountain and being like, “Am I gonna be able to climb this? And am I going to be able to climb this in a way that makes everybody else proud?” You know, I didn’t want to phone it in.
SQ: OK, it’s funny that you say that. When I hung up with you, I knew it wasn’t going to be like that as soon as I met you. I knew instantly. I was like, “Alright, she’s definitely the one that has heart in it. And I felt something. I cried.”
IC: Is there anything specifically that precipitated you being ready? That really made you think: Let’s do it now?
Selena’s outfit in the music video for “Amor Prohibido” (left); the red button-up shirt belonged to her husband, Chris Pérez. Selena’s outfit from the “Amor Prohibido” album cover (right).
SQ: Making this documentary has been in the back of my mind for a very long time. I know the importance of it and I’ve seen the growth and the relevance of what we mean. Not just Selena, but our family. And then honestly, Isabel, I mean, this is one of the reasons why I wanna leave [behind] this documentary because I think that throughout the years people have this impression that we’re riding on her coattails.
IC: Yeah. That’s a huge misconception.
SQ: It’s the furthest thing from the truth. I want to make sure that I bring that to the forefront again, that this was a family effort. Was Selena the star? Hell yeah. I try to explain it this way: If I was no longer here, would Selena y Los Dinos still continue? Yes, of course. The reason we’re not able to continue anymore, and we chose not to, is because she’s irreplaceable. You can’t replace somebody like Selena. She’s a beacon, so to speak, especially for us Latina women. If I was to have a dollar for every time somebody came up to me and told me “I grew up listening to her and I felt so connected to her because she was me. I was her” — I understood that.
Also, things have been changed on social media. I see pictures of her with Michael Jackson. They’re like, “Oh my gosh, she met Michael Jackson?” No, she did not. Throughout the years, I noticed that stories would be changed. I felt that it was important to take this capsule of who we were and what we created and bring it to 2025. If audiences are going to search for anything, I hope that they search for this documentary because it’s told by the people who created Selena y Los Dinos. It’s her husband, it’s me, it’s Abe [my brother], it is my parents, my mom, my dad — our manager. I mean it’s [our bandmates] Ricky [Vela] and Pete [Astudillo], they co-wrote with Abe the majority of our hit songs that are still being performed. So these are the different reasons why I felt that this was the time to do it.
IC: Your answer just now clarified a lot of things for me. It’s that you guys want to have authorship over your story and with AI and things like that, it is becoming increasingly difficult to be able to really claim your story.
From left to right: Selena’s iconic mirror outfit; Selena’s purple jumpsuit from her 1995 performance at the Houston Astrodome.
SQ: The movie was based off of Selena’s life, our life. And Jennifer [Lopez], I love Jennifer. She did a great job [in the 1997 movie]. But Hollywood glitter is sprinkled onto it. And it’s more focused on her life, her short life of 23 years. How impactful it was and what she created and how hard we worked. That movie is still relevant to this day and I believe that it will be for a very long time. It’s a classic. The Netflix Selena series — Hollywood glitter. But this documentary, it’s completely different from those two. This does not have Hollywood glitter on it.
IC: Every time I see posts about, “Why another thing about Selena?” I get so frustrated because of how insidious the racism is against Latinos. The number of times where I’ve made something or I’ve seen something get made and then it just gets kind of pushed aside, put into a different box.
SQ: Oh, welcome to my world! That happened throughout our whole career. It’s frustrating, but my dad used to say, whether they’re talking good or bad about you, they’re talkin’ about you. That still resonates. I can never change the perspective of how people view our family. There’s a reason why she’s relevant. There’s a reason why we are still talking about her. And there’s a reason why this documentary, this bad boy, is going to be on Netflix in 190 countries, 32-plus languages.
IC: It’s crazy to think about. You mentioned how much of a beacon Selena is for our culture. That feels especially pertinent right now. What does that mean to you at this moment?
SQ: Well, this current moment’s always been there. It’s just been, in my opinion, put on the forefront because of our president and because he’s so vocal against who we are, because he is scared — clearly scared. But it’s always been there, and I think it will forever be there.
The vault at Q Productions housing all of the Quintanilla archive.
IC: With all this stuff going on in L.A., the mood is scared. People are scared, people are sad. And there are Selena murals everywhere. And to me, your music and Selena represent the beauty of our culture. When I was making this film, that was something that was motivating me the whole time too. I wanted this film to be about joy and about power.
SQ: Oh, it is. Honestly, going back to your question, I don’t know what to really say to that because I feel like, we’re still going to do us, right? As Latinos, we should not let the voices of what the world wants us to do. We keep on trucking. I think the best thing is to stay true to who you are.
IC: Selena just represents this sense of community, the shared language, and actually a very unusual thing about Selena is that all Latinos can connect to her. Right?
SQ: I agree. And that is a rarity. It was a rarity back then and it’s a rarity still to this day. Because remember, Isabel, our genre of music — Tejano music — in the realm of Latin music is tiny. Our music is only played basically in Texas, Arizona. We took that little bitty speck of music and it’s global now. And the thing is, it wasn’t a thing that became popular because of what happened, because it’s still here 30 years later. I do believe, though, in regards to her passing, that it does now play a small factor in her legacy. A lot of people, I don’t think, would admit or want to talk about that. I feel that that is a small part of the curiosity of who she was. I mean, how can you not? You have this young girl — everybody knows the story. She’s on the brink of doing what we consider the ultimate dream, of doing the crossover, and then she’s murdered. Unfortunately, it will always be there. However, not that it’s a key factor, because Selena was Selena and she was doing what she was doing. Our music was doing what it was doing way before any of this. But we cannot run from the tragedy. The tragedy is part of the story, unfortunately.
IC: The tragedy is still a part of the story. There’s a curiosity about how she died, but I think there’s something else. What do you think about her story, about y’all’s story, makes Latinos feel so connected to you?
SQ: To me, it’s easy. The bicultural thing, I think most people can identify with that because we struggle. Everybody struggles with it. Back then nobody really spoke about it. And then I feel that it’s the family aspect of it, the fact that we were all still together. Latinos and familia, right? I also feel that it was Selena’s realness of who she was as a person. She didn’t put on this facade of “I got to act a certain way” and “I can’t show people who I really am.” You feel like you knew her. Then, I think why the music is still relevant is because our music is different. It’s a fusion of the English vibe in there with the cumbia. Brother modernized the band and the guys modernized a form of cumbia. It’s not dated.
IC: It feels kind of timeless. It feels like something that we have integrated into our culture and will probably be there for a very, very long time.
A statue at the entrance of Selena’s parents house. The Quintanilla family loves dogs.
The location of the famous “washing machine” dance in the 1997 “Selena” film by Greg Nava.
Abraham Quintanilla II’s toy car collection, which he collected over his years on the road.
Suzette Quintanilla at her office in Q Productions.
Cinematographers, Lorena Duran and Cassandra Giraldo.
Switching gears a little, something that a lot of people don’t realize is that our entire camera crew was Latina. The DP was Lorena Durán. I found her work, and it is so beautiful. And then I’ve worked with Cassandra Giraldo for over a decade, and she’s an unbelievable cinematographer and photographer. I shot a little too. And before I knew it, and it truly wasn’t intentional, the whole camera department was Latina. I’ve never seen that before. What was that like for you? You’ve had a lot of camera crews over the course of your career.
SQ: I’ve never seen that at all. I remember because I just saw everybody running around in my house, moving stuff around. I didn’t know what anyone there did, I just knew that they were part of the film crew. But then, when they got behind the camera, they were setting it up, I was like, wait, y’all are the camera people? They’re like, yeah! It just made me feel like, “that’s badass.” I had never experienced that before. I mean, those are steps and boundaries that you just want to shout out about.
IC: What was that experience? When we filmed the interviews?
SQ: Extremely nervous. I was so freaked out. I didn’t sleep actually for days when I found out the date that you were going to film me. I knew that I was going to share my raw feelings, and I didn’t know how much I was willing to give to that. I didn’t know what you were going to ask me. I didn’t know how deep you were going to go. I was concerned for my mom as well — she’d never done an interview before. It was about me dealing with the reality of where you were going to take me. You took it there really good, by the way.
IC: I appreciate that. This is one of the things that I struggle with the most in my profession; there’s sometimes a contradiction between what’s going to be best for a story and my own comfort level about asking someone to go there. You guys were totally on board, but we knew that you’re going to have to relive a trauma. That’s just a really difficult thing to ask somebody to do.
SQ: I mean, I don’t even know how you did that, because once we were in it, it went away. It’s just everything that leads up to that point.
Top left, clockwise: A photograph of Selena at her parents’ home; Abraham Quintanilla Jr.; Marcella Quintanilla; a plaque from Chris Pérez.
(Isabel Castro)
IC: It was an incredible interview. I mean, the interviews that I did with your family are really going to stay with me for the rest of my life, because you guys opened up to me in a way that was so unusual and so brave and so surprising. Because I know you guys said you were ready, but there was a part of me that thought, how much are we going to learn in this interview? How vulnerable are you going to be? And everyone went there, and that’s just such a gift. It was a gift to me, but really it was a gift to the millions of people that are going to see this. Not to freak you out.
SQ: No, I know. And I know that if it was heavy for me, I know it was extremely heavy for everyone. I know you don’t want to know this, but my father, he looked so hard and everything, but he cried for at least a couple days after you guys left. Every day my mom said he was crying. It just brings up stuff to the front. We try to protect that part of our heart. We tend to push it down, and then when it’s resurfaced or when we see a video or we see something like the movie or whatever, it just takes you back to a certain time.
IC: I think people don’t realize that it is ultimately a lot of bravery and self-sacrifice in order to keep your sister’s memory alive. You work very hard to preserve her legacy. It’s an act of love.
SQ: Many, many moons ago, I thought, if I die, will Sister be forgotten and our legacy be forgotten? That was a thing in my head, and that was so many years ago. I know. Why worry about that? It’s just because it mattered to me. And years ago, I remember I told [my husband] Bill, I said, I can die tomorrow, and I know that Sister’s legacy will live on. I know now.
IC: And what do you think made you realize that?
SQ: Just the growth. I see it. I deal with it every day. I see young girls coming and little kids coming into the museum and they speak of her as if she just died.
[Crying]
IC: I’m sorry.
SQ: I’m crying because if she only knew — she never knew though, Isabel, that’s the thing. She didn’t know. She truly didn’t know. Maybe that’s what made her special, that she never thought she was as big as what she really was. It’s everybody that loves her that’s carrying her.
Isabel Castro is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and photographer. Her latest film, ”Selena y Los Dinos,” won awards at Sundance and SXSW and is out on Netflix.
A plaque from Selena’s parents in her memory.
This story originally appeared on LA Times
