D.C. UNITED | SHORT DOC

AARON HERRERA | NOCHE LATINA

THE STORY

D.C. United wanted a film for Noche Latina, a night for the club's Latino community.

Aaron Herrera was the way in. Born in the U.S., Guatemalan through his father, he came up in a soccer family and later chose to wear Guatemala's colors himself. For him the national team isn't just a career move. It's a way home. That's a bigger story than a match report, so we didn't make one.

WHAT WE UNCOVERED

The story wasn't the player. It was where he comes from.

Herrera's life is soccer, but underneath it is family and country, a father and mother who played, siblings who played, a heritage that runs back to Guatemala and pulls him toward it. The pride was the real subject. Not pride in a result. Pride in a people, and a community that sees itself in him.

THE NARRATIVE

We went back to the beginning.

We told it through his upbringing, how the game was there from the start, passed down inside his family, tangled up with where they're from. We stayed on the personal, what's specific to Aaron and what's specific to Guatemalans, and let soccer sit in the background where it belonged. The interviews did the work. The more we asked, the more the family and the culture came forward, and the film became about them as much as him.

He talked about what it would mean to Guatemala to reach a World Cup, what it means to be seen, and that everyone deserves the same fair shot. That's where the pride came through hardest. It closes there, on a community ready to come together and celebrate itself.