Sundance 2024 honors Mexican film ‘Sujo’ by Fernanda Valadez with Grand Jury prize
Sundance 2024 honors Mexican film ‘Sujo’ by Fernanda Valadez with Grand Jury prize. After her previous victory for Without particular signs, the director once again conquers the important independent film event.
By Megan Sauer
It is another great day for Mexican cinema. The exceptional nature of national filmmakers is once again recognized. It was the pleasure of Sundance 2024 to award the Grand Jury Prize to Sujo, by Guanajuato director Fernanda Valadez.
This is the second film by this director to receive an award at this festival, the most important independent film festival in North America.
What is Sujo about and what award did it win at Sundance 2024?
Sujo is another drama about violence in Mexico. Set in Michoacán, the film is the story of the titular character (played by Juan Jesús Varela ), a boy who is orphaned after his father, a hitman, is murdered.
One of his aunts manages to save his life and raises him, but the young man grows up to discover that following his father’s path in a land infested by impunity and blood could be inevitable.
The closing of the Sundance Film Festival gave the pleasant surprise of awarding the Grand Jury prize in the International Drama category to Sujo, the new film by Mexican director Fernanda Valadez.
She had previously won in the 2020 edition with her debut film De ella Sin Señas Particulares. That title won this same award, as well as another for her script and two audience awards.
The anticipation to see this new Valadez film is no less. In case you haven’t seen it, Sin Señas Particulares was one of the most acclaimed Mexican films of 2021 by both critics and the public.
It ended up winning six Ariel Awards, including Best Film and Best Director. It remains to be seen if Sujo ends up having the same momentum.
That film is the story of Magdalena ( Mercedes Hernández ), a woman searching for her son, who has been missing since she announced that she was going to emigrate to the United States.
The search for her makes her cross the country to the border and encounter the incompetent government system for searching for victims of forced disappearance, as well as the migration crisis in the north of the country.
Like that film, Sujo is interested in exploring the impact of violence on Mexicans and particularly in the way in which it directs youth on these bloody paths and if there is the possibility of abandoning them.
At the moment, the film still does not have a release date nor is there an official trailer to share with you, but surely the award at Sundance 2024 will give it impetus to obtain distribution and advertising material.
