A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints

Dito Montiel, Director

2005

98 mins

Color

Appeared at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival
Writer and filmmaker Dito Montiel won the Directing Award at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival with this raw and impressionistic memoir about coming of age in ethnic, working-class Queens in the '80s. Shia LaBeouf and Robert Downey Jr. play Dito at two stages of his life: as a sensitive teen dreaming of escaping the dead-end violence around him, and as an adult who returns to see his father (Chazz Palminteri) after a 15-year absence. The ensemble cast -- which includes Dianne Weist and Rosario Dawson -- won the Special Jury Prize for acting at Sundance.