Tag Archives: World Cinema Documentary

Maite Alberdi to Receive Sundance Institute’s Vanguard Award for Nonfiction

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Maite Alberdi is leading the way in filmmaking… And, now she’s being recognized for it.

The 40-year-old Chilean film producer, director, documentarian, screenwriter and film critic will be honored by the Sundance Institute.

Maite Alberdi,Alberdi will receive the Vanguard Award during the institute’s opening-night gala that will kick off the Sundance Film Festival’s 40th edition on January 18.

The Vanguard Awards honor artists whose work highlights the art of storytelling and creative independence in both nonfiction and fiction.

The Vanguard Award for Nonfiction will go to Alberdi, who directed The Eternal Memory. The film follows the relationship of Chilean journalist Augusto Góngora and Chilean actress Paulina Urrutia. It premiered last year at Sundance and received the World Cinema Documentary Jury Prize.

She was the first Chilean woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for The Mole Agent, which premiered at Sundance 2020.

Alberdi has a long history with the festival: She received a Sundance Documentary Film Grant in 2013 and 2016 and served on the jury for the 2019 World Documentary Competition.

Other honorees include Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan, who will be honored with the first Sundance Institute Trailblazer Award, and Celine Song will also receive the Vanguard Award for Fiction.

The annual opening-night gala raises money for the nonprofit’s labs, grants and public programming. The Sundance Film Festival runs January 18-28 in Park City and Salt Lake City and online from January 25-28.

Garcia Bernal’s “Who is Dayani Cristal?” Opening in NYC Theaters on April 25

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Gael Garcia Bernal will be shining a spotlight on immigrant issues, especially those of migrant workers, in the near future.

The 35-year-old Mexican actor/activist’s Who is Dayani Cristal?, which opened the World Cinema Documentary section at last year’s Sundance Film Festival and won that year’s cinematography award, will be released on April 25 in New York City.

Gael Garcia Bernal in Who is Dayani Cristal?

Focusing on the death of migrant workers in the Sonora desert, the documentary follows a team from Arizona’s Pima County morgue as they try to identify a man who died trying to enter the U.S. through that dangerous path.

In the film, Garcia Bernal investigates the life of the immigrant, known as Dayani Cristal, retracing the man’s harrowing journey along the migrant trail in Central America.

Following its New York City release, the Marc Silver-directed film will expand nationwide in the following weeks.

It’s all part of his work on four short films in collaboration with Amnesty International. The tetralogy is called Los Invisibles about migrants from Central America in Mexico, their journey and risks, their hopes, and what they can contribute to Mexico, the US and the world. He directed the movies, did the interviews and also narrates the four short movies.