Blast Beat Cast and Director Esteban Arango on Making Their Version of the American Dream
One of the many films to world premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival was director Esteban Arango’s Blast Beat. Based on his 2015 short film (also called Blast Beat), the film is about a family in Colombia that leaves for the United States in the summer of ’99 to pursue the American dream. While it’s about the entire family, Blast Beat primarily focuses on two brothers: Carly (Mateo Arias) and Mateo (Moises Arias). In the film, metalhead Carly is an exceedingly smart student that wants to attend the Georgia Aerospace Institute and then work for NASA, while his brother, Mateo, has a tendency for trouble and is constantly fighting with his family. Blast Beat also stars Diane Guerrero and Wilmer Valderrama as their parents and Daniel Dae Kim as a college professor in America and Kali Uchis as Carly’s former girlfriend in Colombia.
Shortly after seeing the film, I sat down with Wilmer Valderrama, Diane Guerrero, Daniel Dae Kim, Moises Arias, Mateo Arias, Kali Uchis and Esteban Arango in the Collider studio at Sundance. They talked about why they each wanted to be part of the film, memorable moments from filming, what the film is about, how the brothers in the film are real-life siblings, and Valderrama talks about his own story and families struggle to get to America.
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