WME Signs Alejandra Vasquez & Sam Osborn, Filmmakers Behind Sundance-Bound Doc ‘Going Varsity In Mariachi’

Matt Grobar
·2 min read

EXCLUSIVE: Alejandra Vasquez and Sam Osborn, the directors behind the Sundance-bound feature documentary Going Varsity in Mariachi, have signed with WME.

The film marking Vasquez’s feature directorial debut and Osborn’s sophomore feature effort makes its world premiere in U.S. Documentary Competition on January 22. It’s set in the competitive world of high school mariachi, where the musicians from the South Texas borderlands reign supreme. Under the guidance of Coach Abel Acuña, the teenage captains of Edinburg North High School’s acclaimed team must turn a shoestring budget and diverse crew of inexperienced musicians into state champions.

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Pic is produced by James Lawler and Julia Pontecorvo of Osmosis Films and Luis A. Miranda, Jr. for Embeleco Unlimited. Impact Partners and Embeleco Unlimited co-financed with Fifth Season, which is also handling worldwide sales.

Vasquez is a Mexican-American director and producer raised in rural Texas who, with Osborn, directed the short Folk Frontera, which was awarded the Jury Prize for Texas Short Film at SXSW 2022 and premiered on PBS’ The Latino Experience. She also helmed the short When It’s Good, It’s Good, co-produced with Latino Public Broadcasting. The up-and-comer cut her teeth on the producing side as part of the teams behind the award-winning features Matangi/Maya/M.IA. (2018) and Us Kids (2020) and is set to co-produce an upcoming feature from Sundance and SXSW prize winner Nanfu Wang.

Osborn’s debut feature doc, Universe, was awarded Best Music Documentary by the International Documentary Association in 2020. In addition to Folk Frontera, the filmmaker of Mexican-American descent has helmed short works including Varsity Oro for Pop-Up Magazine, Night Shift and Eating for Topic, and Language Keepers, a hybrid documentary project meant to help sustain the endangered Athabaskan language of Gwich’in, which premiered at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian.

Vasquez and Osborn continue to be represented by attorney Jackie Eckhouse at Sloss Eckhouse LawCo.

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