This year’s Sundance Film festival comes with plenty for us to celebrate here at The Lift. We’re excited to announce that we have teamed up with development and production studio Hidden Content in a multi-year development deal. Together, we will be creating film and TV content aimed at discovering and fostering both new and established Latin American talent for a global audience. Both companies have roots in CDMX, and our shared love of this city and its creativity unites us.
“With the industry reevaluating its business models, the value of IP is set to rapidly advance,” The Lift partner and executive producer Gabriel Stavenhagen told Indiewire. “We are excited about the opportunity to work with bold creative voices through our ability to finance projects and nurture them to find their audience.”
“In the new era of filmmaking, the audience for any story can be a global one. We’re excited to join forces with The Lift, which will help us expand our ability to keep creating films and television that are unique in style and tone, impactful and meaningful in their messaging, and geared to reach more people in the process,” Hidden Content co-founder Jacob Wasserman also told Indiewire.
To kick off this exciting deal, our first work with Hidden Content is Sebastian Silva’s Rotting in the Sun, a feature-length dark comedy that premiered at Sundance this week. Made in collaboration with Robert Pattinson’s production company Icki Eneo Arlo and LA-based independent production company Spacemaker Productions, the film is a queer satire of creativity and the modern age of self-obsession, and stars Silva alongside comedian Jordan Firstman and actor Catalina Saavedra. Rotting In The Sun is already provoking and delighting critics — a sign of successes to come.
The simultaneously playful and nihilistic story also captures the unique character of CDMX, as director Silva and producer Wasserman were both inspired by the vibrant city they now call home. “I recently moved here, like Sebastian, and we both fell in love with Mexico and Mexico City. There’s such a flavor to the noises that you hear here. We both live in the same building, and you can hear the sounds from the nearby Plaza Rio De Janeiro. There’s really a character to Mexico City that we get to hear when we wake up in the morning,” Wasserman said in a Sundance Q+A.
Of course, we had to travel to Park City, Utah to attend Sundance, connect with friends, watch amazing films, eat delicious food, and celebrate all of this good news. Scroll for some photos of our time at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.
