Sugar

Sugar follows Miguel "Sugar" Santos, a nineteen-year-old pitcher from the Dominican Republic who signs with an American professional organization and is assigned to a minor-league club in Iowa. Far from his family and his old life, he has to adjust to a new country and a new culture while competing for a place on the field. The gap between the future he imagined and the reality he finds becomes the film's central conflict.

The film was directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, who also wrote the screenplay together. It was the second feature for each of them: it followed Fleck's Half Nelson (2006), and it preceded their later collaborations It's Kind of a Funny Story (2010), Mississippi Grind (2015), Captain Marvel (2019) and Freaky Tales (2025). Algenis Perez Soto plays Miguel, with Jose Rijo, Walki Cuevas, Santo Silvestre, Emmanuel Nanita Carvajal and Cesar Emilio Minaya C. among the credited cast of sixty-two. It was produced by Jeremy Kipp Walker, Jamie Patricof and Paul S. Mezey, and released in April 2008.

The film drew a critics' rating of 7.9 out of 10 from 137 reviews, while audiences have been more reserved: 7.1 out of 10 on IMDb from around 5,500 votes and 6.6 out of 10 on TMDB from 79 votes. Its worldwide box office was about 1 million dollars, a modest return for a release handled by Sony Pictures Classics with HBO Films among the production companies.