Family Life by Alicia Scherson and Cristián Jiménez
The Sundance Film Festival announced its 2017 competition lineup today. The 33rd edition of the Park City film festival will bring titles from around the globe, including some Latin American and U.S. Latino titles.
The World Cinema Dramatic competition includes four films from the region. From the Dominican Republic comes José María Cabral’s Carpinteros / Woodpeckers, a story of forbidden love in the Dominican Republic’s Najayo Prison. The romance of two prisoners must develop through sign language and without the knowledge of dozens of guards.
From Brazil (jn co-production with the Netherlands, France and Paraguay) comes Felipe Bragança’s Don’t Swallow My Heart, Alligator Girl!. Joca is a 13-year-old Brazilian boy in love with an indigenous Paraguayan girl. To conquer her love, he must face the violent region’s war-torn past and the secrets of his elder brother, Fernando, a motorcycle cowboy.
In the Chilean Family Life by Alicia Scherson and Cristián Jiménez, a lonely man fabricates the existence of a vindictive ex-wife withholding his daughter, in order to gain the sympathy of the single mother he has just met.
Sueño en otro idioma / I Dream in Another Language by Mexican director Ernesto Contreras is the story of the last two speakers of a millennia-old language who haven’t spoken in 50 years, as a young linguist tries to bring them together.
The U.S. Documentary Competition includes two Latino titles. Mala Mala directors Dan Sickles and Antonio Santini are back with their followup doc Dina, where an eccentric suburban woman and a Walmart door-greeter navigate their evolving relationship in this unconventional love story.
Dolores by Peter Bratt chronicles the life of activist Dolores Huerta as she bucks 1950s gender conventions by co-founding the country’s first farmworkers’ union. Wrestling with raising 11 children, gender bias, union defeat and victory, and nearly dying after a San Francisco Police beating, Dolores emerges with a vision that connects her newfound feminism with racial and class justice.
The 33rd edition of the Sundance Film Festival will take place January 19-29, 2017 in Park City, Utah.
