By Staff Writer (staff@latinospost.com) | First Posted: Jan 20, 2014 07:05 AM EST

This year's Sundance Film Festival will be a big one for the Latin American cinema industry. A handful of Latino films will be showcased in the film festival, which will be running in Park City, Utah from January 16 to 26, according to New York Daily News.

Despite its shutout from the nominations shortlist for the 2014 Academy Awards, Spanish-language programmer Hebe Tabachnik told MyDesert.com that the Latino film industry will not be discouraged on making more outstanding films.

Fans of Latino cinema will be seeing a different side of activist Cesar Chavez as the documentary of Richard Ray Perez and Lorena Parlee, entitled "Fast for Life," recounts the labor leader's final efforts to increase awareness in using pesticide. Perez explained to the Huffington Post why they chose the famed activist as their choice of subject matter for their film, and revealed how Chavez's cause were close to their hearts.

"My fellow producer... likes to say that I was destined to make this film. My father was a migrant farm worker for 22 years, and by the time I was born, he was a factory worker. My aunts and uncles, his siblings were all farm workers, too, up until about 1942."

"Marmato" is another social-themed, David-and-Goliath documentary by Mark Grieco. The film showcases how a small Colombian mining village won their rights to own $20 billion in unprocessed gold from a Canadian company. Funded solely through Kickstarter, Grieco told IndieWire that his film will provide an intimate picture on how a local community took action of their present situation and the future of their livelihood.

Argentinian writer-director Natalia Smirnoff will be debuting her film "Lock Charmer," which is a study on fatherhood. Already considered one of the breakout films of the festival, the global rights to distributing "Lock Charmer" is now owned by French company Memento Films International (MFI), said Variety.

Alejandro Fernandez Almendras' new thriller film "To Kill a Man" will be a breakout film of sorts, said a separate Variety report. Said to be the next one to win festival prizes and sales for Chile, the report said Almendras' recent film indicates that the Chilean director is now open to making outstanding films for a mainstream audience.

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