Carlos (2023)
Director: Rudy Valdez Run Time: 98 min. Rating: R Release Year: 2023
Starring: Carlos Santana, Gregg Rolie, José Areas, Michael Carabello, Mike Shrieve
Country: United States
Language: English
About the film:
World Premiere, 2023 Tribeca Film Festival
Carlos Santana’s lifelong journey began at the age of 5, in his native Mexico, when he learned to play the violin. He developed a love for the guitar, honed his skills and performance style as a street musician, and started his own band as a teenager. And at 22 — just before his first album was released to acclaim — he became one of the major discoveries of Woodstock, anchoring the famous festival’s second afternoon on August 16, 1969.
A music industry legend for 50 years and a 10-time Grammy-winning global sensation, Santana continues to be one of the music world’s premiere artists, blending jazz, blues, and the Mariachi sound with a rock n’ roll spirituality and a sense of music’s primal connection to our deepest emotions.
The electric documentary Carlos (2023) utilizes new interviews with Santana and his family alongside extraordinary, never-before-seen archival footage — including home video recordings Santana himself made, concert footage, and behind- the-scenes moments. Two-time Emmy-winning director Rudy Valdez creates an intimate, rich documentary about a man whose sound casts a magical spell on his fans around the world.
About the filmmaker:
Rudy Valdez is a two time Emmy Award-winning filmmaker committed to creating social, cultural, and political stories through a cinematic and meaningful lens. He got his start in film as a Camera Operator on the Peabody Award-winning Sundance series Brick City and went onto direct a true passion project, The Sentence (2018). Shot and directed by Valdez over the course of a decade, this feature documentary tells the very personal story of his sister’s plight in the criminal justice system while tackling subjects like mandatory minimums and sentencing reform. For this work, the filmmaker won the 2019 Primetime Emmy Award for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking, the US Documentary Audience Award at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, and was a 2018 Critics Choice Documentary Awards Best New Director nominee.
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