Reviews: 'La Tierra Del Valor (The Home Of The Brave)' & 'The Baddest Speechwriter Of All'
Part 1 of our 2026 Sundance coverage highlights two short documentaries.
Our first roundup from Sundance 2026 features reviews of two shorts we included in our list of the most anticipated documentaries of 2026. One of them is a given since it’s co-directed by the master of short documentaries, Ben Proudfoot (The Queen of Basketball; The Last Repair Shop). The other is also by a familiar director, Cristina Costantini (Science Fair; Sally), whose latest is perfect for all the ICE haters out there.
La Tierra Del Valor (The Home Of The Brave) (2026)
Last year, Cristina Costantini was at Sundance with a biographical feature about Sally Ride, an iconic astronaut who sadly had to suppress the truth about her sexuality to maintain her career and legacy while alive. This year, the filmmaker returns to the festival with a short documentary about a woman who risked her career and legacy by not holding back, and instead being true to herself and her community. This isn’t to say that Ride wasn’t brave; it was a very different time and a different issue.
La Tierra del Valor (The Home of the Brave) briefly follows the story of NEZZA, a singer who gained notoriety, positively and negatively, for performing the U.S. National Anthem in Spanish (“El Pendón Estrellado”) at Dodger Stadium last summer, on Flag Day no less. While some of the criticism of the act presumes the defiance was self-serving as a way to get more attention and fame, the documentary allows NEZZA to explain herself better than even her social media defenses could. She begins with a hurried narration of her backstory as the child of two immigrants who met through their love of dance and music, shares her love and gratitude to the Latin community that makes up most of her fanbase, and expresses her disapproval of the Trump Administration’s terror against her community, particularly the ICE raids in L.A.
Yes, the performance wound up benefiting NEZZA’s career (though not enough that she’s easily found on the internet outside of articles about the National Anthem controversy; she doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page!). More so than it brought her serious repercussions. Even the immediate response she claims to have received from Dodger Stadium, stating she wouldn’t be welcome back, was only temporary due to the backlash the venue faced. But the film shows how such gains only come with genuinely good intentions that first and foremost benefit the community and the country. And such intentions only come with a touch of acceptable self-centeredness in the way of being true to one’s nature, artistry, integrity, and heart. NEZZA’s display of purity is even more pronounced than her courage, which makes her arguably even more inspiring here. It’s a difference that makes the documentary and NEZZA as a subject more affecting than profound, and all the better for it.
The Baddest Speechwriter Of All (2026)
Two-time Oscar-winner in the Documentary Short Film category Ben Proudfoot has done it again, and this time he’s combined his proven interests in aging subjects, basketball, music, and Black history with The Baddest Speechwriter of All. His co-director on this short is NBA star Stephen Curry, who seems to be the primary interviewer for the film’s centerpiece conversation with now-95-year-old Clarence B. Jones. The documentary shares Jones telling stories of his background, meeting Martin Luther King Jr., his part in writing the “I Have a Dream” speech, and other biographical and professional anecdotes. He unsurprisingly has a way with words, but his telling of these stories is what makes the film so stimulating.
The single shot of Jones uttering his history could have easily been enough. He’s lively, entertaining, loose yet deliberate. Proudfoot and Curry still add supplementary and illustrative footage, some of it archival and some of it animation. But none of it has the usual feeling of being included just because the filmmakers thought they had to. The animation doesn’t so much provide filler for what doesn’t otherwise exist visually. It’s so precise in perspective, albeit impressionistically, that the images are more like depictions of Jones’s memories. The archival material is similarly specific, enhancing, not diverting. When Jones is talking about the March on Washington and the “I Have a Dream” speech, it’s vital to show clips of these events. The film needs footage of Martin Luther King Jr. and Harry Belafonte, not just because they are characters in Jones’s stories, but because their perpetuated iconography is deserved.
The Baddest Speechwriter of All is a particularly dynamic film as a result, and every cut away from Jones is warranted, every inserted image relevant and appropriate. As someone who is easily distracted away from voiceover material due to (undiagnosed) auditory processing disorder, or simply a poor aural attention span, I appreciate such rationally selected and well-edited montage in documentaries of this sort. Despite Jones’s celebration of riffing here, it’s not the type of film that calls for improvisation. However, in accordance with the riffing theme, it still has the feeling of a freewheeling but determined solo, where Jones is the focal point, and the filmmakers are supporting him with rhythmic and other accessory accompaniment. What they do with the “I Have a Dream” scene is a perfect representation of what their purpose is when making a documentary around such a dominant core element as this one has.