18/08/2025 - This non-fiction film, starring non-professional actors and currently in post-production, portrays the epic personal journey of a successful boxer who chose family life over glory

Filmed during 2024 and 2025 on the island of Tenerife, the documentary Kid Vereje is the directorial debut by producer Ana Sánchez-Gijón (The Last Archer [+see also:
trailer
film profile], Happy Men), who wrote the script alongside Cynthia Alvarado Abarca. With Juan A Castaño as director of photography, starring the protagonists of the story themselves – rather than professional actors – and currently at the editing stage, this film will narrate the life story of the boxer in the title, who chose his family over fame.

Kid Vereje was a Spanish amateur boxing champion. Fast, accurate and unbeatable, he mastered the art of resistance in the ring. But outside it, the real fight was always against an invisible pain: having had a loveless childhood. He grew up losing rounds against silence, loneliness and abandonment. During his teens he turned his rage into muscle, fear into determination, and pain into sacrifice. He became strong. The legend survived. Today, in the twilight of his life, this old champion is facing an unexpected fight.

“This film was initially intended for me to write and produce, but then I decided to direct it,” confesses Ana Sánchez-Gijón. “I brought my Costa Rican co-producer Cynthia Alvarado on board for the script. She gave it a wonderful twist. I grew up in a neighbourhood not unlike Vereje's. I ran around the same rough streets, the same bars and dens: I'm sure that along the way I will have crossed paths with him. I was on the verge of ending up in a bad way, but I managed to find a path. There is a lot of complicity in the experience of creating this film about people that move me. Kid Vereje is a feature film named after a boxer, full of poetry and swear words, which is not about boxing. It is also a documentary, although it doesn't look like one,” she adds.

Ana Sánchez-Gijón has produced Esposados, by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, the first Oscar-nominated Spanish short film; La raya, by Andrés Koppel; Ruleta, by Roberto Santiago, selected at the Cannes Film Festival in 1999; Seis puntos sobre Emma [+see also:
trailer
film profile], by Roberto Pérez Toledo; and The Island Inside [+see also:
interview: Dunia Ayaso and Félix Sabroso
film profile], by Félix Sabroso and Dunia Ayaso, among other work. She produced and co-directed El Club de Archi, a Televisión Canaria children’s programme, and from 2014 to 2021 she directed, co-wrote and produced the animated series Cleo, recipient of international awards and distributed in over seventy countries. She was also responsible for the Canarias Animada training scheme (2006-2011), which helped the animation industry to take off in the Canary Islands.

Kid Vereje is a production by La Mirada (Spain) and Cántico Producciones (Costa Rica). Ana Sánchez-Gijón and Cynthia Alvarado Abarca are executive producers on the film.

(Translated from Spanish)