New York Film Academy (NYFA) welcomed back NYFA Alums Lucía Flórez and Chémi Pérez, as part of our Guest Speaker series moderated by Senior Director of NYFA’s Film Festival Department, Crickett Rumley. Getting into the Sundance Film Festival is every emerging filmmaker’s dream, yet each year less than one percent of submitted shorts get selected.

This past August, Crickett Rumley sat down for a conversation with Lucía Flórez and Chémi Pérez, who beat the odds when their documentary “Shirampari: Legacies of the River” became an official selection of Sundance’s 2023 edition. In this Q&A, they discussed how they developed a festival strategy unique to them and their film, what they learned in the early months of their submission process and festival run, and how they prepared for — and made the most of — their Sundance experience.