New faculty filmmaker premieres three films at major festivals around the world

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — For most filmmakers, having one feature film in a calendar year playing a major festival is a big achievement. Assistant Professor Gustavo Rosa, who joined the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications this fall, has three this year. 

“It is a very blessed year in terms of recognition for my work,” Rosa said. “The process of bringing an independent project to completion and getting it out into the world can be slow and unpredictable. I could not have planned this if I had tried.”

Rosa is a producer on all three projects, which include one narrative fiction feature and two documentary features.

“Seconds Away,” a feature documentary about Belgian-American runner Peter Callahan and his coach Patrick McHugh, took seven years to complete. The film will have its North American premiere Oct. 26 in competition at the Austin Film Festival, followed by a screening at the 45th Paladino d’Oro Sport Film Festival in early December.

Earlier this year, the narrative fiction feature  “So Far All Good,” directed by $eck, co-written by $eck and Rasan Kuvly, premiered at the Tribeca International Film Festival in New York. “This is a special project because it’s a first feature for $eck,” Rosa said, “It’s powerful to help launch a new and promising voice into the industry.”

“So Far All Good” tells the story of a young man who returns home after a prison sentence to find his family and friends have moved on and are uninterested in helping him. The film is praised for its artful and unusual storytelling and strong performances. It will continue its festival run with a European premiere in Wroclaw, Poland, in November.

Also premiering later this year is a feature documentary about bow hunting, executive produced by David Gordon Green, Ley Line Entertainment (“Everything Everywhere All at Once,” The Green Knight”) and Maiden Voyage (“Nosferatu, The Witch”).

Rosa, who was born in Tubarão, Brazil, and immigrated to the United States when he was 12, joined the faculty at Penn State this fall after four years teaching at Boston University.

“One of the lessons I am always trying to impart to my students is that film projects all mature at different rates, and so it is important to always be working on many projects at once,” he said. All three of these projects grew out of connections and friendships forged at Columbia University, where Rosa earned his master of fine arts in filmmaking in 2016.

For Rosa, higher education was a transformative experience that birthed his own passion and commitment to teaching. While at Boston University, he achieved considerable success. Films from classes he co-taught with Associate Teaching Professor Marni Zelnick, who also joined the Bellisario College this fall, won two consecutive Director’s Guild of America Student Awards in 2023 and 2024 — the first and second in Boston University’s history.

Rosa is excited to carry this work forward at Penn State.

“I think there are a lot of opportunities here to help students create work that represents themselves and their experience, but also the unique character of Pennsylvania,” said Rosa, who draws on his own extensive festival experience to help students chart individual paths forward for their own work. “Producing and teaching share many qualities — both are very much about shepherding ideas into being. It is extremely rewarding to see students blossom as people through their filmmaking work.”

Despite his banner year, Rosa continues to nurture additional projects. He is currently the executive producer on multiple shorts and feature films, including Pınar Yorgancıoğlu’s "Those Who Whistle in the Dark," a Turkish-German-Bulgarian co-production that participated in the Biennale College Cinema in Venice. He also is launching a new screening series at Penn State this fall called “Uncanny Valley.”