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A Dreaming Angel

In this short film, a cartoonist shares some of her experiences with the Chavez Caldera family of colonia Anapra, Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. This is an excerpt of an ongoing film project developed from an archive of media spanning over ten years and is a companion piece to an illustrated novel by Phoebe Gloeckner.

  • Phoebe Gloeckner
    Director
    Diary of Teenage Girl
  • Aliyah Mitchell
    Director
    We Are What We Speak,The Dragon Mosaic, Eat Your Therapy
  • Aliyah Mitchell
    Editor
  • Natalia Rocafuerte
    Assistant Editor
    Dream of Emma and Tony, Cold Blooded
  • Aliyah Mitchell
    Producer
  • Phoebe Gloeckner
    Producer
  • Phoebe Gloeckner
    Writer
    Diary of a Teenage Girl
  • Natalia Rocafuerte
    Graphics and Captions
    Dream of Emma and Tony
  • Aliyah Mitchell
    Graphics and Titles
  • Jakub Kalousek
    Camera
  • Aliyah Mitchell
    Camera
  • Ernesto Balthazar
    Camera
  • Martín Chávez Caldera
    Key Cast
  • Brenda Chávez Caldera
    Key Cast
  • Julia Chávez Caldera
    Key Cast
  • Evy Léal
    Key Cast
    "Maria Elena"
  • Frannie Miller
    Animation
  • Phoebe Gloeckner
    Animation
  • Natalia Rocafuerte
    Animation
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    Un Ángel Soñador
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Experimental, Short
  • Runtime:
    20 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    January 27, 2024
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    Mexico, United States
  • Language:
    English, Spanish
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Phoebe Gloeckner, Aliyah Mitchell

Phoebe Gloeckner is a graphic novelist. Her book, The Diary of a Teenage Girl (2002), was praised as "one of the most brutally honest, shocking, tender, beautiful portrayals of growing up female in America." Cartoonist R. Crumb called her story, Minnie’s Third Love (published in A Child’s Life and Other Stories) one of the “comicbook masterpieces of all time.” In 2008, Gloeckner was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship to continue work on an on-going project centering on the life of the family of a murdered teenager living in Ciudad Juárez, several hundred feet from the US-Mexico border. Throughout and preceeding the escalation and gradual recession of the current period of intense violence in the city (3,200+ homicides in 2010), Gloeckner has been observing the evolution of the family, the case of their daughter’s murder, and the neighborhood they live in. The end product of this process will be an illustrated novel.

Aliyah is currently an Ann Arbor, MI-based filmmaker, photographer, and language enthusiast. She holds a BA in filmmaking from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, where she is a communications specialist and multimedia producer. She is driven by a deep interest in experimental and documentary filmmaking. Co-founder of We Are What We Speak, Aliyah has a longtime enthusiasm for language, linguistics, and social impact stories. Her favorite projects examine the intersections of identity, language, and belonging.

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