Filmmaker Duo Fernanda Valadez, Astrid Rondero Sign With CAA Following Sundance Award Win (EXCLUSIVE)

Leo Barraclough
·1 min read
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Filmmaker duo Fernanda Valadez and Astrid Rondero have signed with CAA.

Valadez and Rondero co-directed and co-wrote “Sujo,” which premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and won the Grand Jury Prize for World Dramatic competition. The film currently holds a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

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Their previous film, “Identifying Features,” won best international feature at the 2021 Gotham Awards. Valadez directed, and Valadez and Rondero co-wrote, co-produced and co-edited.

“Identifying Features” premiered at Sundance in 2020, where it won the audience and screenwriting awards.

In 2017, Rondero’s directorial debut, “The Darkest Days of Us,” won two Ariel Awards in Mexico for best actress and best debut film.

Valadez and Rondero continue to be represented by Silent R Management.

In “Sujo,” a cartel gunman in Mexico is killed, leaving behind Sujo, his beloved 4-year-old son. The shadow of violence surrounds Sujo during each stage of his life in the isolated Mexican countryside. As he grows into a man, Sujo finds that fulfilling his father’s destiny may be inescapable.

According to Sundance, “‘Sujo’ recenters stories of cartel violence by exploring its aftermath, the collateral damage, and its orphans. With lyrical intensity and a penetrating humanity, it offers a moving, contemporary coming-of-age portrait of Sujo, a young man named after a strong-willed horse, and the way his identity, consciousness, and moral character are shaped through various episodes — by the women who protect him, the boys lured toward their fathers’ fates, the mentorship of a teacher — as if they are seasons in his growth.”

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