Sundance Institute Announces 2024 Latine Fellowship & Collab Scholarship Artists

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

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

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

The Sundance Institute Latine Fellowship is a yearlong experience in which includes a $10,000 unrestricted grant, bespoke artist development support, creative and tactical support on their projects and regular opportunities for community engagement and networking.

The Latine Collab Scholarship offers a yearlong mentorship with a Sundance Artist Alumni, focusing on craft and career development. Recipients will also meet regularly with Sundance staff and industry professionals, in addition to participating in artist development sessions to help lay the foundation for their career goals.

The 2024 Sundance Institute Latine fellows are:

Karla Claudio (producer) with Matininó: A multi-generational family of Puerto Rican women transform their experience with gender violence into a fantasy film where they search for an island inhabited exclusively by women 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, craft, mythology and land-based practices in support of material and food sovereignty.

Alan Dominguez (director-producer) with The House of Our Memory: Approaching his 80th birthday, a Vietnam veteran/artist 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, is Denver-based with Nuevo Mexicano roots. His films have addressed many subjects in his gravitational point of the unique cultural fabric and social landscapes of the Southwestern United States.

Andrés Lira (writer-director) with Entre Sombras: After failing to secure a babysitter, a farmworker is forced to bring his two kids to work. Lira is a Mexican-American filmmaker and artist of Indigenous Purépecha descent. His work focuses on amplifying the underrepresented stories of Latino 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 insular sisters reveal the extremes they will go to protect one another. Peralta is a Dominican American writer, director, and producer from New York City. Her debut feature, De Lo Mio (Criterion/Janus Films, HBO), premiered at BAMcinemaFest in 2019. She is a 2024 Sundance Institute Directors and Screenwriters Lab Fellow and was featured in Filmmaker magazine’s ’25 New Faces of Independent Film’.

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 grown daughter. Salcedo’s directorial debut, Piel Canela, won eight festival jury prizes. She directed the action-packed, female-driven feature Switch & Bait. Her films blend a commitment to authentic representation with a visually stunning cinematic style.

The 2024 Sundance Institute Latine Collab Scholarship recipients are:

Ricardo Betancourt (writer-director, producer) with Repartidores: a feature about Venezuelan migrants in the U.S. transforming the food delivery industry, highlighting their journey through mass migration, persecution and exile, and reshaping a key service. Venezuelan-born, New Orleans–raised director Betancourt began his career producing music videos, commercials, and short films, earning awards and festival recognition. He’s currently a full-time commercial and music video director. Now, he is finalizing 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 nocturnal Buenos Aires, three women narrate their unrestrained and irreverent tales, with a touch of magic. Bovino is an Argentine director, writer and producer based in Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro. She has directed two short films, participated in several documentary and multidisciplinary independent projects, and is currently in mid-production on her first feature film, The Nights.

Sabrina Ehlert (writer-director) with Connie & 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 an MFA from USC, whose work has been supported by Google, The Producers Guild of America and The Sloan Foundation. Her film, Launch Fever, was 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 blooms during the night shift in a slaughterhouse, where phantoms of the future sit with ghosts of the past. Horwitz is a filmmaker from the Southwest borderlands, whose work navigates the impact of militarization and xenophobia on the region’s inhabitants. Blending research-based fieldwork with fiction, her films examine the intersection of physical and psychological borders.

Eddie Mujica (writer-director) with Loco: At his first therapy session, Rafael Reyes relives the anxious thoughts and overbearing family that boiled over on the night of his 25th birthday. Loco is a surreal, dark comedy about mental health and its stigma in the Latine community. Mujica is a Cuban-American writer, director, and Emmy-winning producer from Hialeah, Florida. His short, Dreamer, was an Imagen Award finalist, 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 a Shore Scripts Short Film Fund Grand Prize Winner.