Astoria to Sundance, Filmmaker Dito Montiel Makes Us Proud

Born and raised in Astoria, Dito Montiel has blazed a few trails, for example:

• Leader of Gutterboy (downtown rock band that signed for $1 million)
• Calvin Klein underwear model
• Novelist, filmmaker, and much more

Montiel’s first film, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, was based on his own book of the same name and—of course—was filmed in Astoria. “The rest of New York has changed, but the feeling is still very much here,” he says. “I wanted it to seem like what it is, which is sort of a small town in the big city.”

The next offering from Dito Montiel (also filmed in Astoria) is called Son of No One and tells the story of a young cop “assigned to a precinct in the working class neighborhood where he grew up” and how “an old secret threatens to destroy his life and his family.”

Son of No One stars Channing Tatum, Al Pacino, Juliette Binoche, Ray Liotta, Katie Holmes and Tracy Morgan, and was recently selected to close out the 2011 Sundance Film Festival (Jan. 20-30).

Follow Dito Montiel on Twitter

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