‘In The Summers’: The Film That Won Sundance’s Top Prize For A US Drama
Premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival
Winning the Sundance Film Festival’s top prize for a United States dramatic film, “In the Summers” is the type of poignant and personal independent movie that you hope will shine at this beloved annual event. Colombian American director Alessandra Lacorazza even took home the grand jury’s directing award for her first-time feature.
The film fits in among past winners that told compelling coming-of-age stories, like “CODA” (2021), “Minari” (2020), “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” (2015), and “Quinceañera” (2006).
It revolves around two Latina siblings, Violeta and Eva, who spend summers with their estranged father Vicente in Las Cruces, New Mexico, but live with their mother during the rest of the year.
Violeta and Eva are unsure of why their father lives in New Mexico, when he was born in Puerto Rico. Their father insists that he belongs, especially since he lives in the house that their grandmother left behind for him.
Together, Vicente constantly looks for ways to have fun with his children. He makes up games to play while eating dinner. He takes them to a local bar to play pool. They go to Bob-O’s Family Fun Center to ride teacups and play arcade games. Or he takes them on surprise trips to parts of the desert so that they can stargaze or see the sunrise over mountainous valleys.
Each attempt at fun seems to be Vicente’s way of avoiding his own demons as well as the air of awkwardness that hangs over them.
Lacorazza, who wrote the screenplay, shows how Violeta and Eva come to better understand their relationship with their father over four summers. They reckon with the alcoholism and erratic behavior that sometimes leaves them frightened.
One layer of the story also involves Violeta discovering at an early age that they are queer. Vicente struggles to accept her identity, particularly how they alter their appearance by cutting their hair and dressing differently.
Throughout the film, Lacorazza trusts her audience to understand what is troubling Violeta, Eva, or Vicente without having them always convey their feelings through words. She gives scenes ample time to develop and recognizes that this is a universal story because so many people can remember what it was like to have their childhood split between divorced or separated parents. Such people can identify with how they felt more at home with one parent than the other.
This would not be as moving of a film if Lacorazza did not make it clear that no matter what Vicente loves his children. And they love him too. It is just harder for Violeta and Eva to be around their dad as they grow older.
Given that the story unfolds over the lives of two children, Lacorazza cast three sets of actors: Dreya Castillo (Young Violeta), Luciana Elisa Quinonez (Young Eva), Kimaya Thais (Middle Violeta), Allison Salinas (Middle Eva), Lio Mehiel (Violeta), and Eva (Sasha Calle).
Mehiel is a trans actor, who previously starred in “Mutt” (2023), and Calle starred as Supergirl in “The Flash” (2023). The child actors each had previously lent their voices to animated shows and appearing in short films or music videos. But each had minimal film acting experience.
The father is played by Rene Perez Joglar, better known as Residente, a Puerto Rican hip hop artist. It is hard to tell that Residente had no prior acting experience because he gives such a heartrending performance.
Each chapter of the film benefits from Lacorazza’s approach to creating chemistry between the actors. The pairs of actors had time to bond during the production, and the children had sleepovers together. By allowing the actors to become friends, they were more comfortable when the camera was rolling and could improvise some of the scenes when Lacorazza would call for a take that more loosely followed the script.
As Lacorazza shared at Sundance, the film was developed through conversations with her sister after their dad died. She arrived at a family story about a father, who has a lot of love for his children but also deals with several issues.
The location of Las Cruces was chosen because of the symbolism of the desert. Lacorazza said she wanted a hot place with beautiful nature that “felt Latin.”
For Filmmaker Magazine, Lacorazza described Las Cruces as “a town with a personality as rich as the characters, from the house with its treasures, Slot Canyon with its million mosquitoes and rattlesnakes, to White Sands, where the temperature reached 108°F by 11 AM.”
Bob-O’s also helped further the aesthetic of the film. But according to Lacorazza, it was not the initial family fun center that she had selected for the scenes. The first location that was scouted “pulled out” when they learned of the “film’s queer themes.”
Films that delicately and maturely create space for the exploration of characters without trying to telegraph every sequence are far and few, and the confidence that Lacorazza had in her outstanding cast allowed her to present a deeply personal story that hits each audience member differently. That universal quality makes “In the Summers” rewarding from beginning to end.
