It’s 1987. Chiqui and Carlos immigrate from Colombia to the United States to find a better life for themselves and their unborn son. Upon their arrival in Newark, New Jersey, they find their vision of the future is more complicated than they thought.
Carlos Cardona is an award winning Colombian American director and cinematographer from Southampton, New York. He has worked in narrative and documentary for over a decade. He has two feature films currently streaming on Amazon Prime: His first feature, Second Chance, a crime thriller set in New York City, and his second feature, Scenes From a Breakup, a neo-mumblecore apartment drama and a work of auto fiction. He is particularly interested in stories that deal with identity, race, and class and how they intersect with American culture. His most recent works include the arthouse music video titled, Hold That Weight, which received a Vimeo Staff Pick in 2020. Carlos served as cinematographer on the Latinx pandemic docudrama, Don’t Come Close which screened at Rooftop Films, Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival and HBO NY Latino Film Festival. Carlos wrote and directed the independent pilot, Chiqui, which is having its world premiere at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.
What I want people to take away from “Chiqui” is that Latin American immigrants, specifically Colombian immigrants, are not just what is seen in popular media. The narratives often associated with Colombian immigrants, and specifically of the 80s, are almost always rooted in Pablo Escobar and the drug trade and the stereotypes that have become familiar tropes in film and television. I want people to see an alternative perspective on the latino immigrant experience that focuses on the internal lives of the characters and their struggles with language and identity rather than only the familiar cliches of external hardship. “Chiqui” allows the characters to be complicated without demanding the audience love and pity them immediately by virtue of them being naive immigrants.
I have seldom seen content produced about the latino immigrant experience from a first-generation American lens. I think my perspective is unique because I grew up between two worlds that has given me the ability to make cultural and self-reflective criticisms about both Colombia and America.
– Carlos Cardona, Writer, Director, Creator
