Sugar – the film – may give you that adolescent high. It’s viewing during November’s Strasburg Film Festival and is about an 11-year-old, sugar-addict Latina who goes through the motions of growing up in a not-so-sweet world.
Directed by Sundance Fellow Emiliana Ammirata, Sugar is a short-film that criticizes society’s beauty standards and the misogynistic society present in Latin America, according to Ammirata.
In Ammirata’s submitted statement about her film, she said:
The film is about Tanya, an 11-year-old Latina who reminds us to live life in a carefree way, and who represents that which we’ve lost with the chaos and anxiety of this world
This project heavily represents the Hispanic and female community. We want to tell the story of girls who have grown up in a misogynistic ambiance where female empowerment has been discouraged. Sugar tells the story of the inner child we all carry within but have suppressed as we’ve become more aware of ourselves.
At the bottom of this blog post, you’ll see a video that Ms. Ammirata made about her reasoning for making this film.
Director Biography
Emiliana Ammirata (1996) is a filmmaker from Caracas, Venezuela, currently based in Los Angeles. She is a Sundance Ignite Fellow ‘17 and has recently graduated from Chapman University with a BA in Film Production. Emiliana’s last short-film at Chapman was recently selected for the Leo Freedman First Cut Shortlist, the university’s thesis showcase for the year. Her work is heavily influenced by the Latinx culture, while she also strives to reshape Latina women in cinema. She has worked with VR in both documentaries and fiction and is currently producing a feature documentary about the corrupt penitentiary system in Venezuela with Jeff Orlowski’s (dir. Chasing Coral) as a mentee through the Sundance Institute. Emiliana hopes to make relevant and necessary independent cinema that does not satisfy itself to one method of storytelling.
Sugar – Seed and Spark Campaign Video from Emiliana Ammirata on Vimeo.
