The Sundance Institute has announced this week the fellows for its five-day 2020 Creative Producing Labs, which include four Latinx filmmakers: Diego Nájera, Alexandra Barreto, Camila Zavala, and Gabriella Garcia-Pardo. This year’s labs have been redesigned to take place digitally on Sundance Co//ab platform and champions and develops current and rising generations of independent producers across fiction and nonfiction film.
The program features year-round industry mentorship, granting, and opportunities to connect with potential financiers in addition to the annual Labs, to develop emerging producers’ holistic creative and strategic skillset for an evolving industry.
Diego Nájera is a Mexican producer. His award winning projects have been featured at the Berlinale, SXSW, Guadalajara International Film Festival, Viña del Mar International Film Festival, HBO, and the Miami Film Festival. He holds an MFA from USC’s Peter Stark Producing Program and his work has been supported by the Sundance Institute, Tribeca Film Institute, and Film Independent. He’s working, with fellow producer Harris Kauffman, on the feature film Chalino, that tells the true story of Chalino Sanchez, originator of the narcocorrido, who immigrated from Sinaloa to Los Angeles in the early 1990s and started a musical revolution with his songs about the lives of Mexican outlaws.
Alexandra Barreto is an actress, writer, producer and director. Her directorial debut Lady Hater premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival and was named one of the “Top 5 Not-To-Be Missed Shorts” from Tribeca by Forbes. Alexandra produced the feature film Too Late starring Academy Award nominees John Hawkes and Robert Forster. She’s working with Taylor Feltner on the fiction film Late Bloomers that narrates the story of Louise, a self-absorbed millennial who following an accident lands in physical therapy, where she befriends an 80-year-old Polish woman who helps her get a grip on life and come to terms with her mother’s Alzheimers.
Los Angeles-based Peruvian producer Camila Zavala earned an MFA from Columbia University. Her award winning short films have been official selections of the Tribeca Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival and Palm Springs International Shortfest. Her feature project Malpelo follows a headstrong female free-diver who makes the perilous voyage to Malpelo, a remote island in Colombia, to investigate the troubling disappearance of hammerhead sharks while aboard a fishing boat with an all-male crew who prove to be as dangerous as the predators she’s studying.
And participating in the Documentary Film Program is the Colombian-American documentary producer and cinematographer Gabriella Garcia-Pardo. She collaborates with independent productions and organizations on features and docuseries and is supported by Sundance, Catapult Films, Impact Partners, BAVC, NOFF, and IWMF. Previously, Gabriella created shorts at National Geographic and filmed musicians at NPR. She’s participating with La Bonga about a displaced community that after twenty years fleeing the violence of civil war, embarks on a journey through the jungles of northern Colombia to resurrect a town that exists only in their memory. Traveling with the townspeople as they reunite for a massive celebration, La Bonga explores the many distances that separate them from their home and the ties that bind people to their land.
