Cassandro by Roger Ross Williams
The Sundance Film Festival has just unveiled the full lineup for its 2023 edition, taking place January 19-29, both in person in Park City, Utah as well as online. As it’s been the case in previous years, the next edition of the festival will feature several films made by U.S. Latinx and Latin American filmmakers.
Three Latin American films—from Puerto Rico, Chile, and Mexico—will have their world premiere in the next edition of the World Cinema Dramatic Competition. La Pecera, the debut feature film by director Glorimar Marrero Sánchez starring Isel Rodríguez, tells the story of Noelia, whose ultimate decision as her cancer spreads is to return to her native Vieques, Puerto Rico, and claim her freedom to decide her own fate. She reunites with her friends and family, who are still dealing with the contamination of the U.S. Navy after sixty years of military practices.
Heroic, the second feature film by Mexican director David Zonana, follows Luis, an 18-year-old boy with Indigenous roots, who enters the Heroic Military College in hopes of ensuring a better future. There, he encounters a rigid and institutionally violent system designed to turn him into a perfect soldier.
Set on the remote island of Chiloé in the late 19th century, Sorcery, the latest film by Chilean director Christopher Murray, follows an Indigenous girl named Rosa lives and works with her father on a farm. When the foreman brutally turns on Rosa’s father, she sets out for justice, seeking help from the king of a powerful organization of sorcerers.
Additionally, the Spanish film Mamacruz by Venezuelan director Patricia Ortega will also have its world premiere in the international dramatic competiton of the festival. The film is the story of a religious grandmother who, with the help of her newly emigrated daughter, learns how to use the internet. However, an accidental encounter with pornography poses a dilemma for her.
The Premieres section of the festival will feature the world premiere of three fiction titles with a Mexican accent. Roger Ross Williams’ Cassandro starring Gael García Bernal, tells the story Saúl Armendáriz, a gay amateur wrestler from El Paso, rises to international stardom after he creates the character Cassandro, the “Liberace of Lucha Libre.” In the process, he upends not just the macho wrestling world, but also his own life.
In Radical, Mexican popular actor Eugenio Derbez reunites with director Christopher Zallas for a second time after the Sundance winning film Blood of My Blood. Based on a true story, the film is set in a Mexican border town plagued by neglect, corruption, and violence, and follows a frustrated teacher tries a radical new method to break through his students’ apathy and unlock their curiosity, their potential… and maybe even their genius.
And the latest film by acclaimed Chilean director Sebastián Silva (The Maid), Rotting in the Sun, features the filmmaker playing himself gone missing in Mexico City, while social media celebrity Jordan Firstman begins searching for him, suspecting that the cleaning lady in Sebastian’s building may have something to do with his disappearance.
Also from Chile, Academy Award nominated director Maite Alberdi is back with her most recent film having its world premiere in the World Cinema Documentary competition. The Eternal Memory, produced by Juan de Dios and Pablo Larraín, is the story of Augusto and Paulina, who have been together for 25 years. Eight years ago, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, and both fear the day he no longer recognizes her.
The U.S. Documentary Competition will see the world premiere of three titles directed by Latinx filmmakers: Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project by Afro-Latina director Michèle Stephenson and her partner Joe Brewster, which uses intimate vérité, archival footage, and visually innovative treatments of poetry to take the audience on a journey through the dreamscape of legendary poet Nikki Giovanni as she reflects on her life and legacy; Alejandra Vasquez and Sam Osborn’s Going Varsity in Mariachi set in the competitive world of high school mariachi, the musicians from the South Texas borderlands reign supreme. Under the guidance of coach Abel Acuña, the teenage captains of Edinburg North High School’s acclaimed team must turn a shoestring budget and diverse crew of inexperienced musicians into state champions; and the biographical documentary Little Richard: I Am Everything on the trailblazer Afro-American rock musician directed by Afro-Latina director Lisa Cortés.
The U.S. Dramatic competition will see the world premiere of Mutt by Chilean-American director Vuk Lungulov-Klotz, in which over the course of a single hectic day in New York City, three people from Feña’s past are thrust back into his life. Having lost touch since transitioning from female to male, he navigates the new dynamics of old relationships while tackling the day-to-day challenges of living life in between.
Divinity by Latino director Eddie Alcazar, produced by Steven Soderbergh and starring Stephen Dorff and Moisés Arias, will premiere in the Next section at Sundance. The fiction film follows two mysterious brothers who abduct a mogul during his quest for immortality. Meanwhile, a seductive woman helps them launch a journey of self-discovery.
