UTA Snaps Up Domestic Sales for Buzzy Mexican Sundance Title ‘Sujo,’ ‘Identifying Features’ Creators’ Unconventional Narco Narrative (EXCLUSIVE)

variety.com:

Holly Jones Ahead of its international bow in World Cinema Dramatic competition at the Sundance Film Festival, Beverly Hills-based United Talent Agency’s Independent Film Group has pounced on domestic sales representation for the unconventional narco narrative “Sujo,” from “Identifying Features” creators Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez.

UTA joins Paris-based outfit Alpha Violet (“Apples”), which handles international sales as well as co-producing the new Sundance title. “Alpha Violet is thrilled to continue working with Fernanda and Astrid after the success of ‘Identifying Features.’ Being a larger team to support our filmmakers is fantastic!” Virginie Devesa, co-head of Alpha Violet, told Variety.

Screening within the fest’s World Cinema Dramatic competition, the project tackles inherited identity and the weighty struggles that suffocate cartel communities through the eyes and experiences of a toddler, Sujo (Kevin Uriel Aguilar Luna, Juan Jesús Varela), who comes of age having lost parents in a town marred by brutality. “In Mexico, there’s an immense crisis of orphancy due to cartel violence.

Some of those orphans are the children of the victims, but many others are the sons and daughters of the perpetrators. We felt that telling a story through the eyes of the son of a perpetrator (a victim nonetheless), gave us a unique opportunity to reflect on the challenges that all young people go through in Mexico, but also in any place where the younger generations face some kind of violence that seems an inevitable path,” Rondero and Valadez explained.