Name: Alberto Guerra

Notable past projects: The Cuban actor has starred in Netflix series including “Griselda” with Sofía Vergara, Mexican thriller “The Accident” and “Narcos: Mexico.”

Sundance project: “Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!,” which premiered as part of the festival’s U.S. dramatic competition. Set in Tokyo’s ballroom dance scene, the film stars Oscar-nominated Rinko Kikuchi as a widow navigating grief who begins working with a new tango instructor, played by Guerra.

 ”This is the journey of a woman who’s not scared to feel and to show her emotions,” Guerra says. “And at some point in her journey be open to, ‘OK, let’s try new things.’ The whole movie is packed with metaphors and beautiful wisdom.”

Walking up and down Main Street in Park City after the premiere, the actor was moved by how many people were stopping him in the street to applaud the film’s message.

“One of the messages of the movie is it’s OK to be messy sometimes,” Guerra says. “We wanted to show that not every process has to be as painful as it looks from the outside.”

Guerra credits writer-director Josef Kubota Wladyka’s approach to the “serious and painful” subject of loss and grief. “He made her journey through grief be fun and entertainment, and still very deep and emotional at the same time,” says the actor.  ”Through her imagination and her dreams and her nightmares and her disordered reality, it’s a beautiful cinematic experience.”

The film is anchored in several dance sequences, an experience that took Guerra out of his comfort zone as an actor.

“ I’m Cuban, and there is this misconception that every Latino, especially Cubans, we know how to dance. Well, not me, I don’t know how,” says Guerra, who worked with choreographers over the course of the two-month rehearsal process. “It was quite the experience to be a Latino and going to Japan and learning over there, in Japan, how to tango and how to mambo, how to cha-cha, from the ballroom dance perspective. That was hard work.”

The actor also appreciated how his role subverts common portrayals of Latino characters onscreen.

 ”Usually it involves violence and it involves a harsh reality. And this was not about that,” he says. “This was about dancing. This was about human beings connecting to each other from different levels. It’s about how complex we all are and how we connect to each other. At the end of it, we all help each other, even if we don’t know each other, to go through life.”

After the festival, Guerra was heading home to Mexico City to spend time with family. He was several projects coming out this year, including series “MIA” for Peacock and a campaign for Dolce & Gabbana that will launch in February.

“I was so busy for almost four years out of home, working all over the place, that I really want to take a few months just to hang out with my kids,” he says, adding that the downtime also supports his creative endeavors. “If you don’t have a life, you don’t have a life to tell.”