Angel Manuel Soto (born January 28, 1983) is a Puerto Rican film director, producer, and screenwriter.

Early life

Angel Manuel Soto was born in Santurce, a neighborhood in

San Juan, Puerto Rico San Juan (, , ; Spanish for "Saint John") is the capital city and most populous municipality in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory of the United States. As of the 2020 census, it is the 57th-largest city under the jur ...

. His parents were a car salesman and a flight attendant. During his youth, Soto was involved in soccer and boxing, which inspired some of his later projects. As he grew up, he studied architecture and documentary filmmaking and writing. Soto began his career as a TV producer and later worked on Art Direction at a local advertising agency.

Career

Before working on his first short film, Soto worked at Standard Style Boutique in

Kansas City The Kansas City metropolitan area is a bi-state metropolitan area anchored by Kansas City, Missouri. Its 14 counties straddle the border between the U.S. states of Missouri (9 counties) and Kansas (5 counties). With and a population of more ...

. During that time, he rented all the rooms in his house and slept on the floor for 2 months in order to save money. In 2009, Soto released the

short film A short film is any motion picture that is short enough in running time not to be considered a feature film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes ...

''22weeks'', which ended up winning multiple awards, including the Bronze Telly Award in 2010. After that, he has released a variety of short films, documentary shorts, and feature films, including ''La Granja'' and ''El Púgil''. Both of these films were nominated to various film awards at film festivals, including the

Chicago Latino Film Festival The Chicago Latino Film Festival is a U.S. film festival, focusing on Latin America and Latinos. Held annually in Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , ...

, the Miami Film Festival, and the

Tribeca Film Festival The Tribeca Festival is an annual film festival organized by TriBeCa Productions, Tribeca Productions. It takes place each spring in New York City, showcasing a diverse selection of film, episodic, talks, music, games, art, and immersive progra ...

. In 2018, it was announced that Soto would direct ''

Charm City Kings ''Charm City Kings'' is a 2020 American drama film directed by Angel Manuel Soto from a screenplay by Sherman Payne and a story by Chris Boyd, Kirk Sullivan, and Barry Jenkins. It is based on the 2013 documentary '' 12 O'Clock Boys'' by Lotfy Nat ...

'', a film based on the 2013 documentary '' 12 O'Clock Boys''. The film had its world premiere at the

Sundance Film Festival The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,66 ...

on January 27, 2020 where it ended up winning special jury prize for its ensemble. The film was scheduled to be released on April 10, 2020, by

Sony Pictures Classics Sony Pictures Classics Inc. is an American film production and distribution company that is a division of Sony Pictures. It was founded in 1992 by former Orion Classics heads Michael Barker, Tom Bernard and Marcie Bloom. It distributes, produc ...

, but was rescheduled to August 14, 2020 due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

. In May 2020, it was announced

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had acquired distribution rights to the film. It was released on October 8, 2020. In February 2021, Soto was announced as the director of an upcoming film about the

Blue Beetle Blue Beetle is the name of three fictional superheroes who appear in a number of American comic books published by a variety of companies since 1939. The most recent of the companies to own rights to Blue Beetle is DC Comics, which bought the ri ...

for

DC Films DC Studios is an American film and television studio that is a division of Warner Bros., which is a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery. It is dedicated to the production of films, series, and animations based on characters from DC Comics, am ...

and

Warner Bros. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Warner Bros. or abbreviated as WB) is an American film and entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California, and a subsidiary of Warner Bros. D ...

The superhero's alter-ego is a Mexican-American teenager called

Jaime Reyes Jaime is a common Spanish and Portuguese male given name for Jacob (name), James (name), Jamie, or Jacques. In Occitania Jacobus became ''Jacome'' and later ''Jacme''. In east Spain, ''Jacme'' became ''Jaime'', in Aragon it became ''Chaime'', and i ...

, which would make it the first DC film to feature a Latino superhero as the lead. The film is set to be written by Mexican-born writer Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer. In March 2021, it was announced that Soto would also direct an upcoming ''

Transformers ''Transformers'' is a media franchise produced by American toy company Hasbro and Japanese toy company Takara Tomy. It primarily follows the Autobots and the Decepticons, two alien robot factions at war that can transform into other forms, suc ...

'' film, along with screenwriter Marco Ramirez.

Filmography

Short films

Feature films

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Soto, Angelmanuel 1983 births Living people Puerto Rican film directors People from Santurce, Puerto Rico