Locals Only

Eager to become integrated with her new neighborhood, a guilt-ridden gentrifier lies about her upbringing in order to join her community garden.

  • Ludwig Hurtado
    Writer
  • Project Type:
    Short Script
  • Genres:
    Comedy
  • Number of Pages:
    10
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • First-time Screenwriter:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • GLAAD Media Award
  • Peabody Award
  • New York Press Club Award
  • Webby Award
Writer Biography - Ludwig Hurtado

Ludwig Hurtado is a queer and Latinx writer, journalist, and documentary filmmaker with experience producing for film, broadcast television, and digital media. He’s produced multiple episodes of NBC's docuseries Dateline, and directed digital documentary shorts for NBC News. He has worked on multiple feature-length documentaries including Making a Killing: Guns, Greed, and the NRA (2016), an exposé of the gun lobby in the United States, and Stonewall 50: The Revolution (2019), which explores the past, present, and future of the queer-liberation movement and was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award. His narrative short, All’s Well (2024) premiered at the Brooklyn Film Festival and won Best LGBTQ Short at the 2024 Independent Shorts Fest.
Ludwig was one of 17 emerging filmmakers chosen to participate in DOC NYC's inaugural Storytelling Incubator in 2021. He's a proud member of the Queer Producers Network, the Video Consortium, and the National Association for Hispanic Journalists. His book, BAD FOODIES is forthcoming from Beacon Press. As a writer, director, and producer of both fiction and non-fiction Ludwig is committed to storytelling that is deeply rooted in social impact.

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Writer Statement

We are at a cultural moment where too many scripts want to sprinkle in some identity politics and check that off a box, but few do so in a way that isn’t cringe to most people watching. As a queer latino journalist of 9 years, I’ve made it my job to ask questions and try to understand how things work. That’s what I want to do with this project: try to peel back a bit and understand how things work. I’m very inspired by how Michael Schur did this with The Good Place and by how 2012 Sundance Theater Lab member Tanya Saracho did this with VIDA.

The questions I’m asking through this story are very personal to me. I’m queer Mexican-American who passes for White. While I didn’t grow up the way Lily (my protagonist) did, I have always been fascinated by the idea of who is or isn’t Latino enough. I also grapple with gentrification every single day. I moved from East LA to Brooklyn when I was 22 and have struggled with the weird moral questions around my place in this area. Has my paying rent here contributed to another family’s eviction? I think about these things so much that I am directing my Documentary short directorial debut about housing displacement in Los Angeles, and I am writing my first book of essays, about gentrification and food. I’ve long been involved with activism and community organizing. I currently work as an editor at a progressive magazine called The Nation. We’re all about doing the right thing, and yet, I know how some of our work can come across to the average reader: way too serious to get through to anybody! I love storytelling and I love the many different ways I’ve been able to tell stories throughout my career. However, I am dying to tell this story in this way. Thanks so much for taking time to read my script and all the ramblings I had to say about it.