Dito Montiel’s A GUIDE TO RECOGNIZING YOUR SAINTS, a coming-of-age drama inspired by Montiel's mid-eighties youth in Astoria, Queens, exudes the rawness and authenticity of the classic urban dramas. Based on his memoir of the same name, GUIDE won both the Dramatic Directing Award and a Special Jury Award for Best Ensemble Performance at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. Shot on a shoestring budget by first-time director, the film features exceptional performances by Robert Downey Jr., Chazz Palmenteri, Dianne Wiest, Rosario Dawson, and Shia LaBeouf, as well as a breakout turn by Channing Tatum.

Montiel, the son of a Nicaraguan immigrant and an Irish mother, was a kid "from nowhere going nowhere," as he wrote in his memoir. Growing up in Astoria, Queens in the seventies, he pulled pranks for Greek and Italian gangsters, confessed at the Church of the Immaculate Conception, took furtive hits of mescaline, and snuck into Times Square brothels. As a young adult, he discovered the grit and grime of Lower Manhattan back when it still felt authentic, formed a punk band called Gutterboy (signed to Geffen for the then unheard of sum of one million dollars), and was himself discovered by the city’s vibrant underground culture. Rather than recount bit-by-bit the events detailed in his memoir, Montiel has distilled and transformed his own source material into an evocative mood piece that ranks as one of the more indelible accounts of New York City street life in years.