Sundance Names 2024 Latine Fellowship & Collab Fellow Artists

The Sundance Institute has announced the storytellers selected for the 2024 Latine Fellowship and Collab Scholarship, now in its third year.

Supporting 10 early-career artists, the program aims to expand Latino representation in independent media by offering professional and creative development support, networking opportunities, and access to the Sundance Collab and ELEVATE.

“This year’s Latine Fellowship and Scholarship recipients come from diverse disciplines, all united by their common goals of growth and increasing representation for a broad range of Latin voices,” said Hajnal Molnar-Szakacs, director of the Sundance Institute’s Artist Accelerator and Women at Sundance. “We are excited to welcome them to this Program and look forward to seeing how creative and financial support will help them achieve these goals.”

The Sundance Institute Latine Fellowship is a year-long experience that includes an unrestricted $10,000 grant, personalized artist development support, creative and tactical support on your projects, and regular opportunities for community engagement and networking.

The Latine Collab Fellowship provides year-long mentorship with Sundance Artist alumni, focusing on craft and career development. Honorees will also meet regularly with Sundance staff and industry professionals and participate in artist development sessions to help lay the foundation for their career goals.

The 2024 Sundance Institute Latino Fellows are:

Karla Cláudio (producer) with Matinino: A multigenerational family of Puerto Rican women transforms their experience with gender-based violence into a fantasy film where they search for an island inhabited exclusively by female warriors. Claudio is a filmmaker, visual artist and educator, born and based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. They produce and direct experimental documentaries on Caribbean and Latin American ethnobotany, crafts, mythology, and land practices in support of material and food sovereignty.

Alan Dominguez (director-producer) with The House of Our Memory: Approaching his 80th birthday, an artist/Vietnam veteran ruminates in his childhood home in northern New Mexico with his son as they both face the trauma that has afflicted them. Dominguez, a Chicanx border-crosser since birth, lives in Denver and has Nuevo Mexicano roots. His films have touched upon many subjects in their gravitational point of the unique cultural fabric and social landscapes of the southwestern United States.

Andres Lira (writer-director) with Between Shadows: After failing to find a babysitter, a farm worker is forced to take his two children to work. Lira is a Mexican-American filmmaker and artist of Purépecha indigenous descent. Her work focuses on amplifying the underrepresented stories of Latinx and Indigenous communities through the exploration of identity, culture, and social justice.

Diana Peralta (writer-director) with No love lost: When a troubled young woman brings her new husband home to meet the family, her devoted but isolated sisters reveal the lengths they will go to protect each other. Peralta is a Dominican-American writer, director and producer from New York City. His debut feature, From Lo Mio (Criterion/Janus Films, HBO), premiered at BAMcinemaFest in 2019. She is a 2024 Sundance Institute Writers and Directors Lab Fellow and was featured in Film-maker ’25 new faces of independent cinema’ from the magazine.

Michelle Salcedo (writer-director) with Cinnamon Skin: Socialite Veronica has a forbidden interracial romance at the height of the Cuban Revolution. She must choose to leave for America to save her father’s life or stay behind to raise her new baby. Years later, she returns to confront her adult daughter. Salcedo’s directorial debut, Piel Canelawon eight awards from the festival’s jury. She directed the action-packed, female-driven film Switch and bait. His films combine a commitment to authentic representation with a visually stunning cinematic style.

The recipients of the 2024 Sundance Institute Latine Collab Fellowship are:

Ricardo Betancourt (writer-director, producer) with Distributors: A story about Venezuelan migrants in the US transforming the food delivery industry, highlighting their journey through mass migration, persecution and exile, and reshaping a fundamental service. Director Betancourt, born in Venezuela and raised in New Orleans, began his career producing music videos, commercials and short films, winning awards and festival recognition. He is currently a full-time commercial and music video director. Now, he is finishing a documentary and writing his first feature film.

Ana Bovino (writer-director, co-producer) with The nights: Inspired by One Thousand and One Nights, The nights reimagines Sherezade’s quest to free women from violence through storytelling. In a nighttime Buenos Aires, three women narrate their unrestrained and irreverent stories, with a touch of magic. Bovino is an Argentine director, writer and producer based in Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro. He directed two short films, participated in several documentaries and multidisciplinary independent projects and is currently in the production phase of his first feature film. The nights.

Sabrina Ehlert (writer-director) with Connie and Lola: Lola Sanchez, desperate to fit into her own culture, and her mother Connie, a proudly assimilated immigrant, find themselves on a chaotic road trip south of the border, where they are forced to confront their cultural shame and find self-acceptance. Ehlert is a Mexican-American filmmaker with a master’s degree from USC whose work has been supported by Google, The Producers Guild of America and The Sloan Foundation. Your film, Launch feverwas nominated for an Imagen award. She writes and directs stories that explore themes of identity and belonging.

Joie Estrella Horwitz (writer-director) with Dreamland: A love story blossoms during the night shift at a slaughterhouse, where ghosts from the future join ghosts from the past. Horwitz is a Southwest border filmmaker whose work addresses the impact of militarization and xenophobia on the region’s inhabitants. Combining research-based fieldwork with fiction, his films examine the intersection of physical and psychological boundaries.

Eddie Mujica (writer-director) with Crazy: In his first therapy session, Rafael Reyes relives the anxious thoughts and overbearing family that overflowed on the night of his 25th birthday. Loco is a surreal dark comedy about mental health and its stigma in the Latino community. Mujica is an Emmy Award-winning Cuban-American writer, director and producer from Hialeah, Florida. Your short, Dreamerwas a finalist for the Imagen Award, while Uno Por Uno: the Cuban missile crisis won awards at HBO’s New York Latino Film Festival and Cine Sony’s New Voices. Loco is the Shore Scripts Short Film Fund Grand Prize Winner.