TITLE: Border Hopper
Section: Short Film Program
Director: Nico Casavecchia
Screenwriters: Mercedes Arturo, Nico Casavecchia
Synopsis: Laura (Gabriela Ortega), a Latinx filmmaker, lands a life-changing career opportunity when she’s hired to direct a Super Bowl commercial for a video game. The catch? The shoot is in Europe, and she can’t travel due to her immigration status, a secret she’s kept from her employers. This creates friction with her husband Jorge (Santiago Reyes), whose Green Card depends on hers. Laura decides to apply for a complicated emergency travel permit to take on the job. Her reality takes a surreal turn as she starts having hallucinations of a nightmarish video-game world. When immigration services deny her the travel permit, she finds support from Jorge to accept the job, even if it means risking their immigration status.
Panelists: Nico Casavecchia, Gabriela Ortega, Santiago Reyes and producer Blaine Morris
First screening: January 21
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Key quotes: On the genesis of his mixed media short, currently being developed into a feature, Nico Casavecchia said: “The short is based on real events that happened to me and my wife — the co-writer, Mercedes Arturo — while we were waiting for some sort of travel permit that became a nightmare. As we were going through the experience, we started feeling that it felt like a thriller. It had high stakes, it had twists, turns, jump scares, everything that you need for a film. So, to cope with the situation, we started taking notes, and eventually, the alchemy of art — turning a bad thing into art — made this film possible.”
Because the film was “a story of immigration privilege,” it was important for him to make it a comedy. “Because we don’t want to take ourselves too seriously on this,” shared Casavecchia. “We always say, if it’s so hard for us, as immigrants of privilege, to go through and navigate the system, it’s just a testament of how f**ked up everything is for people that are less privileged. So, we want to occupy that place of a horror comedy that takes people on a ride that’S fun to watch, but when you connect the dots, it really talks about the struggles of immigration for everybody.”
The Deadline Studio at Sundance ran from January 19-23 at Montgomery-Lee Fine Art on Main Street, when the cast and creatives behind the best and buzziest titles in this year’s lineup sat down with Deadline’s festival team to discuss their movies and the paths they took to get to Park City.
Thank you to our sponsors McGee & Co., Final Draft, Portrait Creative Network, and Courser.