Jaripeo by Efraín Mojica and Rebecca Zweig
The nonprofit Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film Program recently announced its latest cohort of 28 nonfiction projects to receive Sundance Institute Documentary Fund Grants, which included six U.S. Latinx and Latin American projects. A total $1,450,000—almost half a million dollars more than last year’s fund—in unrestricted grant support has been provided to the projects in various stages of production and distribution that address issues of identity, politics, and history.
Out of the six awarded projects, two are in the development stage: the Brazilian documentary Seyi Adebanjo’s Afromystic, and the Argentine co-production Knocking on Heaven’s Door directed by Jonathan Qu and Kevin Feiyang Li; Efraín Mojica and Rebecca Zweig's Jaripeo from Mexico is in production; and three others are in the post-production: the Brazilian film Cais by Safira Moreira, Art After-Life by Argentine-American director David Romberg, and Mexican-born filmmaker Raúl Paz Pastrana's Backside.
Afromystic is a lyrical documentary, directed by Seyi Adebanjo, that follows LGBTQ+ Yorùbá practitioners across the waters of Nigeria, Brazil, and the United States in a quest for post-colonial liberation—by way of Indigenous religion. In Knocking on Heaven’s Door, the Argentine co-production directed by Jonathan Qu and Kevin Feiyang Li, a Christian astrophysicist, following a battle with cancer, races to build his last great balloon telescope to unravel the mysteries of dark matter and the artistry of God.
The debut feature Jaripeo from Efraín Mojica and Rebecca Zweig, is set on the rural rodeos in Michoacán, México, where a hypermasculine tradition is rife with hidden queer encounters. The project follows two rancheros as they navigate desire, machismo, and mass migration from one rodeo season to the next. Cais, by Brazilian filmmaker Safira Moreira, tells the story of Safira, who after the passing of her mother Angélica, travels to search for her maternal figure in other landscapes. The film travels through cities as it follows along the Paraguaçu (Bahia) and Alegre (Maranhão) Rivers, to explore new perspectives of memory, time, birth, life, and death.
The project Art After-Life by Argentine-American filmmaker David Romberg, draws upon the legacy of Osvaldo Romberg, a Latin American artist who pushed the limits of the avant-garde. Years later, his son employs generative AI technology to converse with him, after his death.
Following a successful film festival run with his previous documentary Border South, Raúl Paz Pastrana's Backside follows a racing season from beginning to end and captures the daily work, friendship, dreams, and expertise of the under-recognized migrant workers behind the Kentucky Derby.
The Sundance Documentary Fund offers non-recoupable support for the work of international nonfiction filmmakers that, in the words of the granting organization, “continue to elevate and advance cultural dialogue and break new ground in creativity and innovation from filmmakers with a distinct voice and vision, and a meaningful connection to the work they create.” In a changing media landscape, the Sundance Institute Documentary Fund has been a notable force in supporting work that engages with audiences and the world at large in creative, complex, and provocative ways, while also coalescing real cultural and social impact around some of the most pressing issues of our time.
