Charm City Kings rides exhilarat-
ingly with Mouse (Jahi Di’Allo Winston),
a strong-willed and endearing teenager,
as he and his best friends go from wishful
onlookers to active participants in the
four-wheeled cliques that dominate their
complex hometown. At the 2020 Sundance
Film Festival, Charm City Kings received a
Special Jury Award for Ensemble Cast. The
honor was a dreamlike moment for Soto.
Tired of seeing stories about marginal-
ized youth where their struggle overpow-
ers any other aspect of their multi-faceted
lives, Soto was galvanized by the absence
of sensationalism and fatalism in
Charm City Kings. While not ignoring
the harsh facts that affect communities of
color, the movie opts for a hopeful resolu-
tion for its protagonist.
Positivity is revolutionary in that it
goes against the overwhelmingly tragic
outcomes seen in similar works. “Struggle
might define me, but it’s what I do in the
midst of struggle that makes me who I
am,” Soto said. “We already know what our
destiny is when we don’t have the right
guidance, so why do that again? Let’s bring
something different to the screen.”
Soto not only had to translate his ideas
more quickly from his native Spanish to
English, but also had to translate his spon-
taneous approach to small-scale moviemak-
ing to a larger-budget studio film.
On Charm City Kings, money opened
possibilities that were unthinkable in
La Granja. Now, he no longer had to hacer
de tripas corazón (play down fears and
move along despite obstacles) to get cre-
ative and generate a wow factor. Creative
toys were at his disposal. He experimented
with more resources and technology to
achieve larger set pieces and to build a
world through production design.
But with more infrastructure to produce
the film came a hierarchical dynamic he
hadn’t dealt with before. Prior to this op-
portunity, Soto didn’t need to explain or
justify his motivations or decisions. There
was financial scarcity in his debut, but
also an auteur mindset where every choice
emanated from one source. He had overall
control and final say at every step of the
process.
On Charm City Kings, with more people
to answer to, he had to develop a new skill
set that would allow him to engage more
directly with others in the production and
bounce around ideas to arrive at a consen-
sus. He hopes other independent filmmak-
ers seeking to evolve to bigger projects can
make the transition as smoothly as he did.MOVIEMAKER.COM SPRING 2020 59JAHI DI’ALLO WINSTON (C) IS MOUSE
IN CHARM CITY KINGS.ÁNGEL MANUEL SOTO (R) DIRECTS
PACINO “CHINO” BRAXTON, WHO PLAYS
JAMAL IN CHARM CITY KINGS.PHOTOGRAPHS BY WILLIAM GRAY / SONY PICTURES CLASSICS
“Even though cinema is always a col-
laborative effort, in this particular process
where it wasn’t my intellectual property and
I wasn’t the producer, I was directing some-
one else’s material. That collaborative pro-
cess was very revealing for me. I realized it
was very satisfying that as a director I found
myself forced to have better communicative
language,” he explained. “Beyond having an
idea, it’s about having the capacity to find
the language to communicate my ideas so
that everyone can understand them and
agree to them because I need other people
to approve. I need those above to say yes.”
Soto attributes his lack of professional
jargon or filmic vocabulary to his unique
journey to moviemaking. A career in
entertainment didn’t seem viable to him,
considering Puerto Rico’s economic and po-
litical setbacks, so he studied architecture.
Years later, he gained cinema knowledge by
watching the masters and reading theoreti-
cal books—some of which he couldn’t afford,
and would steal from bookstores.
La Granja was a trial by fire that show-
cased his ability to command a set, direct
actors, and operate under pressure. But his
work at RYOT, an LA-based VR production
company, gave him an industry education
in how to interact with creators, guided by
much more structured parameters.
At RYOT, Soto directed Dinner Party, an
impressive virtual reality short film that
played Sundance and Tribeca.
“Working on VR, I developed a sensibil-
ity of immersion and spatial awareness,
and understood how use it to my narrative
advantage,” Soto said. “With VR, you have
to consider that what’s around you is just asimportant as what’s in front of you.”
Making 360 cinema, as he describes it,
taught him the importance of lighting and
dressing sets in a way that enables the cam-
era to float through the scene and interact
with a similarly conceived sound design to
construct an immersive sensorial piece.THE RIDE
Soto and Charm City Kings cinematogra-
pher Katelin Arizmendi looked at all of the
spaces Mouse would inhabit. In the movie’s
visual pièce de résistance, “The Ride,” an
entire neighborhood comes together on
a hot Sunday summer afternoon on their
bikes (or motoras, as Soto refers to them)
to do tricks, race, and share good times.
“The Ride” included long and fluid takes,
300 extras, and an intricate chase involv-
ing police and members of the Midnight
Clique, a group of elite street riders.
Soto had no experience with a logisti-
cal challenge of this magnitude, but he
did have several advantages: new gadgets,
studio-funded security, and intensive pre-
visualization that made him feel as though
he’d edited the sequence in his mind
already. The endeavor was expected to run
without much trouble—until a gas leak
forced shooting to stop.
Once everyone returned for reshoots,
seasoned cinematographer Shelly Johnson
joined the team, and reassured everyone