Primos (Cousins)
Puerto Rico, 23 mins
During a teenage road trip to the west coast of Puerto Rico, 16-year-old Cristóbal begins to suspect that his crush, Yazmín, and cousin Marcos are secretly seeing each other.
Writer/Director: Ricardo J Varona
Co-Writer: Ida Yazdi
Producer: Tony Yang
Director of Photography: Katherine Castro
Editor: Leeda Yazdi
Composer: Benjamin Louis Brody
Cast: Gustavo Rosa, Brian Rittenhouse, Sharlene Cruz, Valeria Pomales Rosado
Contact: Ricardo Varona, rjvaronarivera@gmail.com
Program B
Friday, May 12th at 7pm ET
About the Writer/Director
Ricardo J. Varona is an award-winning Puerto Rican writer/director based in NYC. Varona holds an MFA from Columbia University where he was a Milos Forman Directing Fellow. With strong roots in Puerto Rico, Varona has shot several short films on the island. His stories are intimate portraits of fraught families, sexual experiences that often border on the transgressive, and coming-of-age.
About the Co-Writer
Ida Yazdi is an Iranian American filmmaker raised between Isfahan, Iran and Birmingham, Alabama. She is a former architect having worked within renowned architecture studios around the world before deciding to embark on a career in screenwriting. Her writing was featured on the 2021-22 Muslim List, created in partnership with the Black List. Yazdi was accepted into the Writers Guild Foundation’s Writers’ Access Training Program, Women in Film Writers Mentorship Program, and the STARZ #TakeTheLead Writers’ Intensive. She is currently a fellow for the 2022-23 NBC TV Writers Program. She received an MFA in Screenwriting from Columbia University where she was awarded the 2020 Screenwriting Teaching Fellowship. Since then she has worked as a Writers’ Assistant and Script Coordinator for shows like City on Fire on Apple TV+ and The Girls on the Bus on HBOMax. She is now a Staff Writer on Season 1 of We Thought We Were Done for NBC.
About the Producer
Tony Yang is a Chinese-American film producer based in New York City. He has helped produce three feature films and over thirty short films, which have screened at numerous festivals, including the Palm Springs International Shortfest, Traverse City Film Festival, Brooklyn Film Festival, and more. His most recent short film that he produced, Same Old, was selected to the main competition of the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, as well as New York Film Festival. In addition to his film producing work, Yang has also worked on several TV series, including Mating (Showtime). He recently finished internships with two production companies: The Population, co-founded by Oscar-Winner Mollye Asher, Mynette Louie, & Derek Ngyuen and Emjag Productions, led by Wolf Of Wall Street Executive Producers Alexandra Milchan and Scott Lambert. Yang holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Film and TV Production from Michigan State University and a Master's Degree in Creative Producing from Columbia University."