Parity Pipeline

Parity Pipeline

Stealing Cars

Directed by Marly Hernández Cortés and Stephen Schuyler

After his mother’s unexpected death, a teenage car thief, Matías, is sent to live with the abusive father that they ran away from thirteen years earlier. STEALING CARS is about the determination of personal identity within the wreckage of a shattered American dream.

  • ABOUT
  • BIO
  • SCREENINGS
  • AWARDS
  • PRESS
  • CREDITS
  • GALLERY

Genre

Synopsis

Matías was four years old when his mother, Isa, stole him away from his abusive, alcoholic father. Now, as a teenager, he is a seasoned car thief, living with her in a Virginia Beach public housing complex. But, after her sudden and unexpected death, Matías is sent back to Baltimore to live with the father they ran away from over a decade earlier. Returning to the locations of a forgotten childhood, Matias is forced to confront the reemergence of repressed trauma, while coming to terms with his own inability to protect her.

Director Identity

Bio

Marly Hernández Cortés, grew up in Aguadilla, a small town on the west coast of Puerto Rico. In New York she studied acting at Circle in the Square and HB Studios. Marly received her M.F.A. in directing and film production at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Most recently she became a 2023 Panavision New Filmmaker Production Grant recipient for her first feature film, “stealing cars,” that she co-directed and co-produced. In 2021 and 2020, she was a Saul Zaentz Innovation Film Fellow and Production Grant recipient at Johns Hopkins. In 2021 she received a Mayor’s Individual Artist Award from the Creative Baltimore Fund on behalf of the Mayor and the City of Baltimore. She is the recipient of a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) scholarship, National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts (NHFA) grant/scholarship, and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation grant. Her thesis film "Mala" was made with the support of a Panavision New Filmmaker Production Grant and received an award grant from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, having its world premiere at the Austin Film Festival. In 2023, she became the assistant program director of the Johns Hopkins Film and Media graduate film program, where she is also a senior lecturer. When not being a filmmaker she is parenting a creative human, sewing, gardening, hiking, snorkeling, or watching endless amounts of PBS.

Screening History

Maryland Film Festival- 2026

Awards History

Panavision New Filmmaker Production Grant - 2023

Saul Zaentz Innovation Fund Fellowship - 2023

Maryland State Arts Council - 2023

Press

"Hernández Cortés: While every scene presented new challenges, especially given the torrential downpours that continuously interrupted our days, the biggest challenge we faced overall was making the movie on such a low budget. We received grants from the Saul Zaentz Innovation Fund, Panavision and the Maryland State Arts Council, to name a few. But our entire budget was only about $130,000. Managing this budget over the entire production meant approaching the film as a series of creative solutions rather than being able to rely on the tactics and tools that larger budgets allow. A lot of what’s onscreen came from the passion demonstrated by every member of the cast and crew, a group of people who really believed in this film and put every ounce of their creative spirit into each frame."
postPerspective

Credits

Cinematographer - Sheldon Chau

Co-Director/Writer - Stephen Schuyler

Producer - Stacie Jones Gentzler

Producer - Rachel Pollock

Lead - Carlos Pagán Cruz