The Sundance Film Festival, like the San Diego ComiCon at the other end of the cultural spectrum, has become many things to many people, and a powerhouse in its particular slice of the entertainment industry. So even if only a few of the 112 feature-length films that are showing at the Festival are actually in competition, the mere fact that a movie made it that far–one out of over 4,000 submissions, more than half of them from the U.S.–is a major deal.
Of that list of 112 only two can be said to be “U.S. Latino” films in any serious sense. One is Youssef Delara and Michael D. Olmos’ Filly Brown, a labor of love that many of us have been following on the internet for (what seems like) years, as they slowly developed the project, found the money, staggered through post-production, and finally submitted the film. The other, a first-time feature from Aurora Guerrero, an accomplished maker of short films, has gotten less attention during its birthing process, and though it’s not in the competition it’s bound to get some serious attention once the Festival gets underway on Jan. 19.
