For the past four and a half years, we have been filming Angel Ortiz (LA2) in his daily life. The camera stays close. Not to reconstruct the past, but to witness the present. What emerges is a raw portrait of an artist navigating survival, identity and belonging under the weight of a celebrated history.

As a teenager on the Lower East Side, Angel painted alongside Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol. The film reframes the 1980s not as myth, but as lived reality. A time of necessity that shaped a movement and exposed the uneven dynamics of who creates culture and who later benefits from it. Those same psychological and social economics are still at play today.

This is not a simple comeback story. It is a film about power, authorship, value and the invisible systems that shape recognition. Through Angel’s experience, larger questions unfold. Who carries history. Who profits from it. And what it means to still be here.

Follow the journey and subscribe for updates as the film moves toward completion.