2021 Sundance Ignite x Adobe Short Film Challenge

“Before the World Was Big” is a semi-autobiographical story about a moment in my childhood growing up as an immigrant. This is my senior thesis film for the University of Central Florida. The story highlights some of thecultural and socioeconomic challenges I came to realize my parents faced when we migrated to the state of Florida from Bogota, Colombia. At its core this film is about the inherent misunderstanding between mothers and daughters and the small moments in a family’s life that stay with you forever.

Fault lines emerge as tensions come to a head in a teenage friendship close to sisterhood.

“How To Raise A Black Boy” based off the fantastical and literary journey of “Peter Pan,” originally was my analysis of my queer black childhood, but it grew, beyond my childhood to become a collage of my academics, of current American politics, and of the shared experience of childhood secrets that haunt our adulthoods. “How To Raise A Black Boy” is a “once upon a time” story told from the past to the future. I see myself, my brothers, my fathers, and my lovers. In this fairy-tale we can all coexist in our mutual experiences as black boys.

An intimate portrait of the 80-year-old African American street photographer Louis Mendes, who began his career in 1953 as a door-to-door baby photographer in Harlem. Taking street portraits across the city, through the civil rights movement, the drug epidemic, crime, and poverty, Mendes forged a living with his 1940s Speed Graphic press camera. Now a New York legend with 37 photographer apprentices, he reflects on the challenges and joys of a life shaped with his camera by his side.

Accurately awkward, Rose attends a karaoke party and hears a voice louder than her own in this subtly nuanced take on navigating adulthood and finding independence.

Representation of Latinx characters across film genres remains limited and even more so for Central Americans, who are often overlooked in the industry. As a descendant of Central American war refugees, I was raised with the understanding that plants are sacred. My roots trace back to the mountains of Chalatenango, El Salvador, and I’ve never fully identified with the industrial city life of the U.S., which often feels disconnected from that ancestral bond. I deeply relate to the cultural dynamics explored in this story, and as a filmmaker, I see film as a powerful medium to illuminate the spiritual lineage and enduring connection between the Latinx community and the natural world.

SHORT SHORTS is based on my formative teen years growing up in Winter Springs, Florida. Short shorts and bikinis were everywhere. I realized clothes weren’t just a form of self-expression - they were a way to fit in. I set out to create a story about an Arab-American Muslim teen trying to form her own identity outside of her home life and separate from the pressures of her peers. As Fatima attempts to balance two expectations, she settles into a routine that fulfills neither. She doesn’t know what she wants or who she is just yet -and that’s okay.

Lennon, a cartoonist, works as a part-time hostess at Restaurant. The Russian eatery and its male dominated staff foster an ever-increasing environment of hostility towards her as she endures never-ending encounters with her co-workers, each seemingly more condescending than the next. In an attempt to cope with Petrov’s toxic work environment, Lennon draws from the restaurant’s oppressive qualities, both subtle and overt, as inspiration for the cartoons she creates during the long night shifts spent standing at the podium. However, a particularly violating incident with a respected client causes Lennon's sense of reality to collapse.

A car breaks down in an anonymous South African town where a young girl has been waiting for something to happen.

When I was a child I lived with my uncle Ricardo and I found out that he had AIDS. He passed away in 2011 and left me his inheritance: a box with 1.000 personal archives collected in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. I made a homage film using his archive. This work, apart from the box materials, revolves around my memories. A time when we used to host home parties. The house would turn into a nightclub, attended by gay, straight, transgender, police, thieves, prostitutes, priests, and atheists. This is a homage made with Love.