Igualada by Juan Mejía Botero
The Sundance Film Festival has announced the complete lineup for its 2024 edition, taking place January 18-28, both in person in Park City, Utah as well as online. The upcoming festival will feature a varied selection of dramatic and non-fiction films by Latinx and Latin American filmmakers, in five different categories.
Three Latin American films—from Peru, Mexico, Brazil—have been selected to screen at the World Dramatic Competition. Reinas is the third feature film by Swiss-Peruvian filmmaker, Klaudia Reynicke-Candeloro. The film is set in the backdrop of the social and political chaos in Lima during the summer of 1992. It follows Lucia, Aurora, and their mother, Elena, as they plan to leave and seek opportunities in the United States.
Sujo, is the second collaboration of Mexican filmmakers Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez. The film tells the story of Sujo, who was left behind at four years of age after his father, a cartel gunman, is killed. The shadow of violence surrounds Sujo during each stage of his life in the isolated Mexican countryside. As he grows into a man, Sujo finds that fulfilling his father’s destiny may be inescapable.
Pedro Freire’s debut feature film, Malu, will also screen under this category. The Brazilian director’s film tells the story of Malu—a mercurial, unemployed actress living with her conservative mother in a precarious house in a Rio de Janeiro slum—as she tries to deal with her strained relationship with her own adult daughter while surviving on memories of her glorious artistic past.
Igualada, directed by Juan Mejía Botero is one of Sundance’s official selections for the World Cinema Documentary Competition. The Mexican-Colombian documentary tells the story of Francia Márquez, a Black Colombian rural activist. Márquez challenged the status quo with a presidential campaign that reappropriates the derogatory term “Igualada”—someone who acts as if they deserve rights that supposedly don’t correspond to them—and inspires a nation to dream. Botero’s exclusive access to Francia Márquez’s presidential campaign reveals an unwavering commitment to fight inequality.
Additionally, two Latin American non-fiction films will participate in the U.S. Documentary Competition. Frida, by acclaimed editor Carla Gutierrez, is an intimately raw and magical journey through the life, mind, and heart of iconic artist Frida Kahlo. Gutierrez tells the story of one of the greatest artists of the 20th century through her own words for the very first time—drawing from her diary, revealing letters, essays, and print interviews— and brought vividly to life by lyrical animation inspired by her unforgettable artwork.
Gaucho Gaucho is a Argentine-American co-production by acclaimed photographers and now three-time Sundance-fêted filmmakers Gregory Kershaw and Michael Dweck. The film is a celebration of a community of Argentine cowboys and cowgirls, known as Gauchos, living beyond the boundaries of the modern world, presented with image and sound that reach an operatic beauty.
Included in the Midnight category, Kidnapping Inc. is a darkly funny but deadly serious political thriller set in one of the kidnapping capitals of the world. The debut feature of Haitian filmmaker, Bruno Mourral, follows two desperate kidnappers on an irreverent, high-speed misadventure through the mean streets of Port-au-Prince, finding danger and intrigue at every hairpin turn.
The US Dramatic Competition has a selection of films written by Latinx filmmakers on its slate. In the Summers, the debut feature of queer Colombian-American writer-director Alessandra Lacorazza follows two sisters that navigate their loving but volatile father during their yearly summer visits to his home in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Esteban Aragango’s sophomore feature Ponyboi will also screen in this category. Award-winning Colombian American writer-director's new film tells the story of a young intersex sex worker in New Jersey who must run from the mob after a drug deal goes sideways, forcing him to confront his past.
The 2024 edition of the Sundance Film Festival will take place 18-28.
