Cassandro (2023)
Director: Roger Ross Williams Run Time: 107 min. Rating: R Release Year: 2023
Starring: Andrea Pazmino, Gael García Bernal, Mark Vasconcellos, Roberta Colindrez, Yavor Vesselinov
Country: United States
Language: English, Spanish with English subtitles
About the film:
World Premiere, 2023 Sundance Film Festival
Saúl Armendáriz, a gay amateur wrestler from El Paso, rises to international stardom after he creates the character Cassandro, the “Liberace of Lucha Libre.” In the process, he upends not just the macho wrestling world, but also his own life. Based on the true story of groundbreaking lucha libre wrestler Saúl Armendáriz.
“a performance steeped in cheeky humor, resilience and radical self-belief… an exhilarating exploration of fearless queer identity”
—David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter
About the filmmaker:
Roger Ross Williams is a director, producer, and writer, and the first African American director to win an Academy Award with his documentary short Music by Prudence (2010). He is known for projects that push the boundaries of culture and film. His documentaries include God Loves Uganda (2013), the Academy Award-nominated and Emmy and Sundance Film Festival award-winning Life, Animated (2016), the Emmy Award-nominated virtual reality experience Traveling While Black, and The Apollo (2019), which won the 2020 Emmy for Outstanding Directing. Among other accolades, he has received the Career Achievement Award from the International Documentary Association.
He made his fiction directorial debut with the real-life tale of Cassandro (2023), the “Liberace of Lucha Libre,” at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.
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