Festival Predictions

2022 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Roger Ross Williams’ Cassandro

Published on November 22, 2021

Celebrated Oscar-winner and Sundance regular (for his docu output) with 2013’s God Loves Uganda and 2016’s Life, Animated, Roger Ross Williams made a curious move into fiction storytelling when was named among those attending the 2018 Directors Lab. Back then the project on paper was known as The Life and Death of Cassandro, and not much time later the filmmaker got into the ring with Gael Garcia Bernal (another Sundance habitual) for the abridged titled Cassandro – a biopic on Saúl Armendáriz. For those not into the know, Bernal becomes a bleached blond wrestling misfit who took machismo by the horns and added a bunch of pizzazz to arm locks and body slams. Roberta Colindrez and Bad Bunny co-star. Production began early in the year in Mexico City – but we’re unsure if the projects was wrapped up since.

Gist: This tells the true story of Armendáriz, a gay amateur wrestler from El Paso who rises to international stardom after he creates the “exotico” character Cassandro, the “Liberace of Lucha Libre,” and in the process upends not just the macho wrestling world but also his own life.

Production Co./Producers: Ted Hope and Todd Black.

Prediction: PREMIERES.

U.S. Distributor: Amazon Studios.

Eric Lavallée

Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).