Making its world premiere at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, writer-director Alessandra Lacorazza’s In the Summers arrived against the backdrop of far buzzier fare starring big names like Kristen Stewart, Steven Yuen, Jason Schwartzman, Woody Harrelson, Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg.

In short order, though, word-of-mouth helped establish the semi-autobiographical coming-of-age tale, told over four non-consecutive summers, as one of the more refined, well-crafted and quietly moving offerings of the festival. When the dust settled, the movie would go on to snag both the Grand Jury Prize and the Director’s Award in the U.S. Dramatic Competition section — a rare feat that additionally saw Lacorazza crowned as the first Latina filmmaker to win the latter award in the festival’s storied history.

Eschewing heavily plotted dynamics, In the Summers centers on Violeta and Eva, a pair of sisters whose parents are divorced. During most of the year they live in California with their mother, but in the summertime they travel to Las Cruces, New Mexico, to spend time with their loving but unpredictable father, Vincente (Puerto Rican musician Residente, né René Pérez Joglar). Over the course of four formative summer breaks, spanning adolescence to young adulthood, Violeta and Eva learn to appreciate their father as a person with character flaws and limitations inextricably intertwined with his passion and tenderness.

The first summer basically establishes the rhythms and frames of Lacorazza’s storytelling, and shows mostly good times — if also a few hints of problems to come at the bar Vicente most likes to frequent, owned by lesbian friend Carmen (Emma Ramos). In the second summer the two girls, now in their early teens, clock more of their father’s alcoholism, and the visit actually ends with him driving drunk and running his car off the road, injuring Violeta. The third visit finds Eva, now a senior in high school, visiting her father by herself, and experiencing his emotional distance. In the fourth and final summer, Eva and Violeta return as young adults and struggle with complicated feelings of estrangement due to their father’s new family.

One of the great difficulties of young adulthood, regardless of family of origin (but especially in cases of divorced and/or blended families), is coming to terms with the fact that one’s parents are actually people, with their own desires, shortcomings, needs, and lives outside of serving as a caregiver. Lacorazza’s film taps into this universality, which is especially rarely addressed in American cinema that tends to favor much more programmable and direct dramatic conflict.

Casting is everything in a film like this, and the movie’s highly personal nature obviously led Lacorazza to think long and hard about finding the right fits. Residente probably helped her secure her budget, but he’s no mere figurative stand-in; he brings a complexity and ragged sensitivity to his role as Vincente. You can see how he has genuine love for his children, while also lacking the maturity and judgment to do right by them.

The young female actors are equally solid. Luciana Elisa Quinonez, Allison Salinas and Sasha Calle (Supergirl in The Flash) portray Eva, while Dreya Renae Castillo, Kimaya Thais Limòn and Lio Mehiel breathe life into Violeta. The aforementioned Ramos also deserves special mention for her turn as Carmen, who becomes an important surrogate figure of stability in the girls’ lives as they grapple with their father’s drinking and especially as Eva begins to question her own sexuality and carve out a queer identity.

Housed in a regular Blu-ray case, In the Summers comes to physical media via Music Box Films, in an attractive packaging that quite gratifyingly offers up an assortment of bonus features which outstrip the typical offerings afforded contemporary American independent fare. The movie’s 1.66:1 widescreen presentation, via an AVC-encoded 1080p transfer, and an English and Spanish language 5.1 DTS-HD audio track honor its appealingly captured intimacy, which is understandably heavy on natural lighting, given its setting. The notable exception (as it was in theatrical presentations of the film at Sundance) is a purposefully indistinct and dark segment during the aforementioned offscreen car crash — kind of a sleight-of-hand cheat on Lacorazza’s part, given the project’s budgetary constraints — that here suffers a bit of discoloration. While the film unfolds in bilingual fashion that eschews subtitles for some Spanish dialogue as an editorial choice (an introductory title card confirms this fact), there are in fact optional English and Spanish subtitles included here, for those who want to circumvent Lacorazza’s artistic wishes.

Bonus features for this release are hearty, and especially affirming for up-and-coming and would-be filmmakers. Cast interviews from the movie’s well-received Sundance debut, as well as a Q&A with Lacorazza from its New York City premiere have plenty of buzzy energy, but the feature-length audio commentary track with the writer-director and various crew members probably offers the most bang for a viewer’s buck. Lacorazza brings in different participants for each “summer” segment, so listeners get a nice overview of both physical production, the movie’s casting, and editorial choices in post-production. Seven-and-a-half minutes of deleted scenes and around two-and-a-half minutes of bloopers are also included, and it’s interesting to view the former after having had a chance to listen to the perspective of editor Adam Dicterow on shaping the segments and attempting to find some balance in running time between them.

A great long conversation with Lacorazza and Residente digs into both the latter’s performance and attraction to the material, and how the former juggled the nuts-and-bolts demands of filmmaking while also crafting such a highly personal work. Also included on the Blu-ray is an image gallery; Lacorazza’s 2019 short film Mami, an 11-minute drama that delves into familial resentments from a decidedly different angle; and the writer-director’s 90-second “Meet the Artist” segment from the Sundance website during the movie’s festival presentation. To purchase In the Summers on Blu-ray, click here.