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Most people know the end of the story of Selena Quintanilla, the pop star who brought Tejano music to the mainstream before she was tragically murdered at the age of 23. The tale of her short life and horrible death has been retold over and over, most famously in the 1997 movie “Selena” starring Jennifer Lopez and most recently in the widely panned 2020 Netflix series “Selena: The Series.”
“Selena y Los Dinos,” the new documentary from Isabel Castro, premiering at Sundance, accomplishes a rare feat. By the conclusion of the film, I was sobbing. I knew what was coming, and I was still wrecked.
Castro accomplishes this by, above all, focusing on Selena’s life, rather than the sensational way she died. “Selena y Los Dinos” — also produced by Selena’s brother and sister — is a celebration and inquiry into the music she made. Anchored by personal archival footage, “Selena y Los Dinos” is a picture of Selena’s vibrancy as well as her canniness. It makes for a potent reminder of both what her loss means and why her work is still so vital.
“Selena y Los Dinos” tells the Selena story from its inception. Her father Abraham was a musician who sang with the original band known as Los Dinos. Absent from his young family’s life, he gave up his dreams of stardom to work at Dow Chemical in Lake Jackson, Texas. But when he realized his young daughter had a powerful voice and an inclination for singing, he saw a business opportunity. He recruited his son A.B. to play bass and his daughter Suzette to drum. He named the band after his former group.
In addition to using material that comes from the Quintanillas’ personal camcorders, Castro has Abraham, A.B., Suzette, and Marcella, their mother, sit for interviews. She uses these wisely. The only talking heads in the film are people directly involved in Los Dinos, which means everyone who speaks had a first-hand understanding of how the music evolved.
For as filled with love as the film is, Castro makes it clear that Abraham saw this as a money-making opportunity and, eventually, did Selena. A.B., who ended up writing some of Selena’s biggest hits, doesn’t mask some of the disdain in his voice when he discusses his father’s insatiable drive. On top of that, there’s a heartbreaking moment courtesy of the archives where Selena discusses how she doesn’t have that many friends, having been pulled out of school to focus on work.
And yet Abraham’s financial savvy also led them to Tejano music, which they ultimately mashed up with cumbia to create their unique sound. Castro is deftly conscious of the complicated space that Selena occupied, weaving in a narrative of assimilation to multiple cultures.
Though Selena is best known for bringing Spanish language music to a wide audience — and was on the verge of becoming a major crossover artist when she died — she herself was not originally a Spanish speaker. You see her struggling in early interviews with Spanish-speaking hosts, and a crucial concert in Mexico goes awry when the audience seems to sense that she can’t banter with them in their language. To white American listeners, Selena was a foreigner. To those in Mexico, she was an outsider.
You watch as Selena herself recognizes how she has to mold herself for the sake of success. She learns Spanish so she can hold her own in any tongue. Interested in fashion design, she shapes her own iconic look — the sparkly bras and high-waisted pants.
All the while, she remains a remarkably young person. That’s highly evident in the grainy video that shows her fooling around with Suzette, and the members of the band — one of whom, Chris Pérez, she would marry after initially keeping their relationship a secret from her father. The images of Selena out of the public eye — giggling, goofing off, sometimes being annoyed—are the ones that stick with you, the memory of a girl who never really got a childhood or an adulthood.
She’s always magnetic, no matter the context, but it’s wild to watch her transform when she gets onstage into an unstoppable force of charisma, whether she’s dancing, her legs moving a mile a minute, or she’s bringing up a guy on stage to coyly emasculate him during “¿Qué Creías?”
As the movie moves closer to the end of Selena’s life, you realize time is running out for Castro to get into the full drama around her death. But then it’s almost a relief when you understand that Castro is not going to spend the time rehashing that. The name “Yolanda” — a reference to Yolanda Saldívar, the fan-turned-murder — is only uttered once, in passing. It’s a choice that rips the killer of any power, leaving Selena in charge of her narrative.
What lingers is the complete sadness that this woman, who broke so much ground and was set to break so much more, is no longer present. In her family members’ and her bandmates’ faces, you can see how raw their sorrow still is. But “Selena y Los Dinos” is no mere tribute, it is a vibrant argument for Selena’s humanity, as well as her status as a legend.
Grade: B+
“Selena y Los Dinos” premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
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