U of A students dream in widescreen at 20th annual Tucson film screening 📽️

University of Arizona senior filmmakers chose some pretty iconic Southern Arizona locales as the backdrop for this year’s “I Dream In Widescreen” film shorts.

Neylani Castro went to Nogales for “Parallel Lines,” a love letter to the border town. The Santa Rita Mountains provided the picturesque backdrop of Allie Cincera’s “No One Can Hear You for Miles,” a story of sisters battling the mental toll of isolation.

Xander Maniece filmed his sci-fi thriller “The World We Live In” at Kings Anvil Ranch in the rugged desert of Altar Valley, 20 miles from Tucson. Tucson native Alek Mendez set his detective drama “The Grit of It All” at the renowned former Western movie studio Old Tucson, whose film credits include “Rio Bravo,” “El Dorado,” “Tombstone” and “Three Amigos” and the TV series “The High Chaparral” and “Gunsmoke.”

They are among the 13 films being screened at the 20th annual University of Arizona School of Theatre, Film & Television’s “I Dream In Widescreen” at Fox Tucson Theatre on Saturday, May 10. The students will compete for jury prizes and a chance to join a growing list of UA filmmakers whose works have drawn attention from regional and national film festival programmers and led to opportunities in the industry.

“They have put a lot of energy, creativity — and themselves — into their films, which explore diverse themes like familial bonds, grief, friendship, life under capitalism and the vagaries of love,” said TFTV Associate Professor Michael Mulcahy. “The films are also, in individual ways, self-portraits of filmmakers expressing who they really are and what they care about. It will be exciting to see and hear the work they and their talented casts and crews have produced.”

Last year, films by Jackson Huffman, Anna Agosto, Myles Gordon, Ryan Ramsey and Kaila Hines were selected for the 2024 San Diego International Children’s Film Festival at Comic Con International, a four-day convention that draws around 135,000 attendees annually.

“The Veil,” an experimental film by Cosmo Brusa Zappellini and Cincera, has screened at multiple festivals including Florida’s Chroma Art Film Festival, where it won Best Student Film. “Quédate Un Rato” (Stay A While) by Mendez and Chloe Raymundo screened at the Phoenix International Film Festival and joined several films at last weekend’s Nogales International Film Festival, which projected the films on both sides of the Arizona-Mexico border.

UA’s film school is ranked ninth overall in the Wrap’s 2024 “Top 50 Film Schools,” which is 15 spots higher than its 2023 ranking by the online publication that covers the business of entertainment. The school was second on the Wrap’s list of public schools, behind UCLA.

Saturday’s films will be juried by independent producer Christine Vachon, whose 100-plus credits include Celine Song’s 2023 film “Past Lives” that brought Vachon her first best picture Oscar nomination; Savannah Abrishamchian, development coordinator at Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions (“Us,” “Candyman”); and Jeff Yanc, program director at the Loft Cinema, Tucson’s nationally recognized independent art house cinema.

“I Dream In Widescreen” starts at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Fox, 17 W. Congress St. Tickets are $5 in advance through idiw.tftv.arizona.edu.

The lineup

“Parallel Lines” by Neylani Castro

“Play Pretend” by Jordan Fouts

“The World We Live In” by Xander Maniece

“Universe Academy” from Daniel Cadena

“Even Now” by Cosmo Brusa Zappellini

“Playing It Ghoul” by Bennett Smith

“Blush’n” from Madison Hernandez

“No One Can Hear You For Miles” from Allie Cincera

“People For Paws” by Cody Rivera

“The Grit of It All” from Alek Mendez

“Pizza Guy Returns” by Philip D. Summers

“The Glass Planet” by Gaël Baup

“Nostalgiathon ‘99” by Cailan Compierchio

Focus on filmmakers

“The Grit of It All” by Alek Mendez

Alek Mendez wanted to explore how to get beyond grief in “The Grit of It All.” Set in 1988, it follows Detective James on the scene of a grizzly murder in an abandoned Western show town. He filmed at Old Tucson Studios, a place he knew well, having grown up in Tucson. Finding the whodunnit becomes secondary to the film’s deeper, darker theme of surpassing grief.

Mendez, who graduated from Pueblo High School, grew up loving movies and loving Old Tucson.

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“I always knew about Old Tucson, and I absolutely adored it, and especially with its history with films,” he said. “Being able to shoot there and kind of becoming part of the history kind of makes it a full circle moment for me.”

Mendez started writing “The Grit of It All” last summer. He originally set out to write a comedy, but he changed course, examining how to navigate mental health and grief against the backdrop of crime and drama.

This is Mendez’s second film short. Last year, his short “Quédate Un Rato” (Stay a While), which was selected by the Phoenix International Film Festival and the Nogales International Film Festival, was a lighthearted homage to his late grandfather.

“This one was a lot more of a challenge for myself, putting myself to the test,” he said.

Mendez began filming on his birthday last November and finished post-production this spring.

With Old Tucson as the backdrop, Mendez said he hopes to dispel the stereotype that Arizona is just for Western films.

“I thought, ‘Well, hey, what if I change the narrative? What if I flip the page and try something of my own, giving some respect to Arizona and its Western lore but putting a little twist on it’,” he said.

After he graduates later this month, Mendez said he hopes to move out of Tucson. He said he is in talks with production companies in Los Angeles, New York and Mexico City.

“My ultimate goal, especially as a Latino filmmaker here in the program, I really just want to tell stories that I feel like deserve to be heard,” he said. “Tell unique stories, have fun with it, and my biggest plan there is to work my way up and try to be a cinematographer. As much as I would love to be a director, cinematography is my love and passion and bread and butter.”

“Nostalgiathon ‘99” by Cailan Compierchio

Cailan Compierchio combined her lifelong love of music and respect for 1990s comedies from Mike Myers and Kevin Smith in “Nostalgiathon ‘99,” a comedy about a girl band trying to arrange its first and last concert after losing its rehearsal space to one of the girl’s nerdy brothers.

The film is an homage to the music and films of the late 1990s.

For inspiration, Compierchio thumbed through the comedy section of her VHS collection “and I noticed how many films I had that were from the mid to late ‘90s and how many have influenced me so much as a filmmaker and writer.”

“I love Mike Myers, and so I was looking back at ‘Wayne’s World’ and ‘Austin Powers,’ “ she recalled. “I love Kevin Smith and so there’s a lot of Kevin Smith references in the film. And I also just love the music of that time, that riot grrrl era of music. Le Tigre. Bikini Kill. I just love their music and their sound.”

Compierchio wrote the lyrics for an original song in the film and a friend of a friend in Los Angeles composed the music, she said.

The New Jersey native said she wanted to make a film that was a comedy and “something that was a little bit like weird at times and absurd.”

“I knew I wanted it to center around friendship and that idea of a group of friends, specifically female friends, kind of getting together and doing something and going on some type of adventure,” she said.

Compierchio plans to return to the East Coast after graduation and pursue a job writing comedy.

“Comedy has always been my dream and my goal in life,” she said. “My biggest inspirations are probably Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, that era of ‘Saturday Night Live’ comedians.”

“No One Can Hear You For Miles” by Allie Cincera

Allie Cincera’s father introduced her to her first horror film at a age that she says now might have been too young.

But the experience bonded father and daughter and set Cincera on a path to create “a new horror genre story that no one’s ever done before.”

“I love horror films. I love fear as like a way to connect with audiences, and I think it’s just such an interesting emotion and it’s really hard to do,” she said, adding that she admires horror filmmaker David Lynch, who uses suspense and absurdity to connect with his audience and make them uncomfortable.

Her senior thesis short, “No One Can Hear You For Miles,” has a bit of that sense of suspenseful discomfort as two sisters find themselves in the middle of nowhere in a post-apocalyptic world. When the younger sister Molly gets stir-crazy and goes out into the dark night, things go horribly wrong.

“I like the idea of isolation, making people imagine things, or craft different realities,” said Cincera, who said she was inspired by her three sisters to write a story about the sister dynamic. “I wanted to do something that was sister related, and so that was really fun. And, like, just imagining myself, if I was locked in a cabin with my sisters, I think we’d all go a little crazy.”

Cincera filmed “No One Can Hear You For Miles” over three days at the Kentucky Camp Cabin in Coronado National Forest near Sonoita.

Cincera, who was born in Phoenix and raised in North Carolina and Georgia, said she would like to see the film land in a few festivals like her last UA film “The Veil,” with classmate Cosmo Brusa Zappellini. That film won best student film at the 2025 Chroma Art Film Festival and was selected by the Arizona Underground Film Festival, Phoenix Film Festival and Nogales Film Festival.

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