Most people know the end of the story of Selena Quintanilla, the pop star who brought Tejano music to the mainstream before she was tragically murdered at the age of 23. The tale of her short life and gruesome death has been retold over and over again, most famously in the 1997 film “Selena” starring Jennifer Lopez and most recently in widely panned 2020 Netflix series “Selena: The Series.”
“Selena and Dinos,” the new documentary from Isabel Castro, premiering at Sundanceaccomplishes a rare feat. By the end of filmI sobbed. I knew what was coming, and I was still devastated.
Castro accomplishes this by focusing primarily on Selena’s life, rather than the sensational way she died. “Selena y Los Dinos” — also produced by Selena’s brother and sister — is a tribute and an examination of the music she made. Anchored by personal archival footage, “Selena y Los Dinos” is a portrait of Selena’s vibrancy as well as her skill. It’s a powerful reminder of both what her loss means and why her work is still so important.
“Selena y Los Dinos” tells Selena’s story from the beginning. Her father Abraham was a musician who sang with the original band Los Dinos. Absent from his young family’s life, he gave up his dreams of stardom to work at Dow Chemical in Lake Jackson, Texas. But when he realized his young daughter had a powerful voice and a penchant for singing, he saw a business opportunity. He recruited his son AB to play bass and his daughter Suzette to drums. He named the band after his former group.
In addition to using footage from Quintanilla’s personal video cameras, Castro has Abraham, AB, Suzette and Marcella, their mother, sit for interviews. She uses these wisely. The only talking heads in the film are people directly involved with Los Dinos, meaning that everyone speaking had a first-hand understanding of how the music developed.
As filled with love as the film is, Castro makes it clear that Abraham saw this as an opportunity to make money and eventually Selena did. AB, who ended up penning some of Selena’s biggest hits, doesn’t hide some of the disdain in his voice when discussing his father’s insatiable drive. On top of that, there’s a heartbreaking moment courtesy of the archive where Selena discusses how she doesn’t have many friends, having dropped out of school to focus on work.
And yet Abraham’s financial savvy also led to Tejano music, which they eventually blended with cumbia to create their unique sound. Deftly aware of the complicated space that Selena occupied, Castro weaves in a narrative of assimilation into multiple cultures.
Although Selena is best known for bringing Spanish-language music to a wide audience – and was on the verge of becoming a major crossover artist when she died – she herself was not originally Spanish-speaking. You see her struggle in early interviews with Spanish-speaking hosts, and a crucial concert in Mexico goes awry when the audience seems to feel she can’t joke with them in their language. To white American listeners, Selena was a foreigner. To those in Mexico, she was an outsider.
You see when Selena herself realizes how she has to shape herself for success. She is learning Spanish so she can hold her own in any language. Interested in fashion design, she creates her own iconic look – the sparkly bras and high-waisted trousers.
All the while, she remains a remarkably young person. That much is evident in the grainy video, which shows her frolicking with Suzette and the members of the band – one of whom, Chris Pérez, she would marry after initially keeping their relationship a secret from her father. The images of Selena out of the public eye — giggling, sloppy, sometimes annoyed — are the ones that stick with you, the memory of a girl who never really got a childhood or an adulthood.
She’s always magnetic, no matter the context, but it’s wild to see her transform when she steps on stage into an unstoppable force of charisma, whether she’s dancing, her legs are moving a mile a minute, or she’s picking up a guy on stage to mutually deworm him during “¿Qué Creías?”
As the film nears the end of Selena’s life, you realize that time is running out for Castro to get into the full drama surrounding her death. But then it’s almost a relief to realize that Castro won’t spend the time recovering it. The name “Yolanda” – a reference to Yolanda Saldívar, the murder of the fans – is uttered only once, in passing. It’s a choice that tears apart the killer of any power, leaving Selena in charge of her story.
What lingers is the utter sadness that this woman, who broke so much ground and was set to break so much more, is no longer present. In the faces of her family members and her bandmates, you can see how raw their grief still is. But “Selena y Los Dinos” isn’t just a tribute, it’s a living argument for Selena’s humanity, as well as her status as a legend.
Grade: B+
“Selena y Los Dinos” premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. It is currently seeking distribution in the United States.
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