Last weekend 2025 Sundance Film Festival, IndieWire hosted the panel “Shaping the Future-Voices of Next-Gen Film Makers” at Adobe House. The conversation contained filmmakers who had been supported by Adobe Film & TV Fund, an initiative devoted to helping underrepresented creators and filmmakers find career opportunities through a variety of programs, including Latinx House, Gold House and Ignite Scholarships.
In a conversation moderated by indiegees Chris O’falt, “Selena and Dinos“Director Isabel Castro,” Keep me close “co-director/film photographer/co-editor Aurora Brachman,” Librarianes “editor María Gabriela Torres,” Sweet Talkin ‘Guy “editor Mario Fierro, and filmmaker Mel Mah talked about their path to Sundance and how It is to be an independent film artist in 2025. The conversation, which you can look at at the top of this page, was a sincere look at the challenges and long hours required to fulfill their dreams of striving to make a career as an independent documentary filmmaker .
“It’s hard to make a lot of money as a director when you show up, it’s more an expensive hobby than something you get paid to do,” Brachman said. “And when you get paid, especially in documentary, you don’t get so much paid. And so I have a lot of hats. “
As a cinematographer, Brachman, in addition to his own very personal card (“Keep me close”), helped also helped to shoot a feature that played at this year’s festival, and in previous years was part of the producing teams of films that played Sundance.
“It’s really hard to say,” No, I will put that work aside to do the time, so I can devote myself to my own creative crafts because my goal is to be a director, “said Brachman.” It is to think that you are worth it, there is a lack of thoughts that you have to try to release, and it is very, very difficult to actually cut out the time to pour into your own project … and often the last cup that is filled is your own. “
For Brachman gives an Ignite fellow, non-profit support some room to give way to their own projects, but the advantage is often more than financially.
“We all at this stage are people in color, and I believe that in different environments we are taken more or less seriously, and I sometimes believe that these institutional approval stamps are even more critical for us because it is very difficult to be taken seriously, “Said Brachman. “It’s fun because I also work with a function. I’ve been working on it for five years now, and when I’m in other settings and I’m losing the movie, people’s eyes glaze on. And I’ve noticed when I’m here (at Sundance with a movie and part of Sundance Ignite X Adobe Fellowship), it’s like, I beat the movie and everyone is like “woooow.” These settings are important. They change how you are perceived. ”
Castro is proof of the endurance required to get a function to Sundance. Before ”Hundred“Which premiered at Sundance in 2022, she had three shorts rejected by the festival. But eventually she received one of the Sundance Institute’s coveted documentary fund contributions for “Mija”, which gave the project the momentum needed for it to start “Snowball.” After five years of hard work with “Mija”, a functional documentary met about young Latina manager Doris Muñoz with critical praise and a Disney/FX distribution agreement after his Sundance debut. But Castro warned that things will not be easier after the first success.
“As you start to become more and more visible, especially as a filmmaker of color, you become more and more tokenized, and you are asked to make more streamlined versions of other people’s imagination, and it is so difficult to turn off money and stability and work In the pursuit of self -expression and exploration and potentially other failure, “said Castro.” You are put into this system (where) it is as if they dangle gold in front of you and say: “Follow me”, and you have to trust yourself . “
Castro, who this weekend premiered her much -awaited “Selena y los dinos”, a documentary about “Queen of Tejano Music”, Selena Quintanilla, joking that after “Mija” she promised she would not take a gig that made a celebrity – – Doctor. And when Quintanilla’s family and music label approached her, she got a break.
“I had long conversations with them and said, ‘Will you trust me? Will you let me present this in the way I would like, which will let the archives breathe. It may feel different from the Selena Quintanilla documentary that you want me to do. “And I just took the job because they said yes to it,” Castro said. “To have yourself as a northern star, it is a very challenging thing to continue making day in and day out.”
It is another path to your first Sundance as editor, but equally difficult. Lives in Denver, “Sweet Talkin ‘Guy” editor Mario Fierro had to create her own opportunities to break into the film industry.
“I started with a hundred dollar camera,” Fierro said. “I started making weddings, quinceañeras and went to the University of Denver for my undergrad and I became the video guy – if you were in a fraternity or Sorority, you would see me with a camera.”
With a lot of life and persistent e -mail messages, Fierro was able to make Inroads as a video in the music world, first for Singer/Rapper Todrick Hall and Lady Gaga’s choreographer Richy Jackson, and eventually spent two lucrative years working for Cardi B. along The B. Way, with a detour to AFI GRADE School, was Fierro’s ultimate dream to become editor working in film and television.
“When I started flying to New York five times a month for Cardi, and it was super cool and everything, but I had just turned 30 and I was like,” Okay, I will be 60 years with a camera that follows as follows A celebrity? ‘, said Fierro.
Going away from good money to build a career as a full-time editor was a leap of faith and some financial shock, and he credits his Adobe Latin House scholarship by helping to make the transition. Fellow Editor and Latinx House Alum, María Gabriela Torres, who edited the functional document ”The librarians“Premature on Sundance 2025, agreed.
“I think that for people like us, it’s the next generation, the worry is how will I get the next chance?”, Said Torres. “Because I feel happy that I got a chance, and I think it’s a conversation that we all should have, how do we give each other opportunities and that is when opportunities, like what Latinx House has done for us, what Adobe has done For us, really important – to give us votes and to give us platforms to put our names out there and help us get a new job. “
MAH is in the middle of Journey on the road to get his passion project out into the world, comes to Sundance 2025 with his script “This Way to Home”-A Daddy Dotter Dramedy about a queer Chinese Canadian teenager and her emotionally Stoic father (Ken Jeong attached) road stumbles from Toronto to Los Angeles to capture the next solar eclipse. For MAH, who began his career on the studio side of film and television, North Star is doing the project something she wants to see on the screen.
“How I hit the tone is that it’s”Little Miss Sunshine‘Meeting’Lady Bird,“But with Asian characters,” said Mah, who based the film on his own road trips with his father. “I always wanted such a movie. I could watch “Little Miss Sunshine” over and over again, and I just wanted to see my experience and my story, our stories, more properly represented. “
With actor Stephan James’ Bay Mills Studios who produces, MAH is on Sundance and is looking for the last funding to get green light, but what she gets from being at the festival is another type of fuel.
“What I love to come to Sundance, and being in society and watching movies, is that I always get filled with so much inspiration and hope that we can really do something to make a difference by making these movies,” said Mah. “These stories are so difficult (to do), but it is through that difficulty and through the obstacles that we have to dig so deep into ourselves to create something that can move other people.”
