OTHING ABOUT Ángel Manuel Soto’s existentialist
debut, La Granja, conspicuously suggests he would
embrace the car chases and tense action of his sec-
ond feature, Charm City Kings, which is centered on
African-American dirt bikers in Baltimore. But the
Puerto Rican director felt there were strong parallels between his
personal history and that of the characters in the film.
While Soto’s La Granja told an intimate multi-narrative story of
people’s everyday battles in a modern-day colony, his larger-scale
follow-up called for new techniques and broader storytelling. Speak-
ing to MovieMaker in fluent Spanglish—his very own Boricua style
of it—he dissected his transition from a no-budget debut film to a
studio production. A stint bregando (working intensely) in Virtual
Reality also expanded his artistic tool set.
Producer Caleeb Pinkett presented him with Barry Jenkins’ early
draft of the Charm City Kings screenplay, which writer Sherman
Payne later fleshed out. The politically minded and eclectically
skilled filmmaker says he got the job through his sheer personal af-
finity with the team and his clarity of vision.
“It was important to be authentic to the emotion, be authentic to
Baltimore as much as possible, and even moreso to be authentic to
how we, black and brown people, see ourselves,” he said.
For him, their shared experiences growing up in underprivileged
environments shortened the distance between his native Santurce, a
barrio in San Juan, and Baltimore.58 SPRING 2020 MOVIEMAKER.COM
HOW CHARM CITY
KINGS DIRECTOR
ÁNGEL MANUEL SOTO
LEARNED TO RIDE
WITH A BIG STUDIO
BY CARLOS AGUILARPHOTOGRAPHS BY WILLIAM GRAY / SONY PICTURES CLASSICSSoto found commonalities
between his small first
film and his higher-budget
second — and between
Baltimore and Puerto RicoSoto found commonalities between his small
first film and his higher-budget second —
and between Baltimore and Puerto RicoN