The Californer - CLIKA Built Authenticity at Studio Scale Through a Cultural Lens — Casting Director Paul Sinacore

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Casting Director Paul Sinacore, CSA (Casting Society), on culturally credible casting, building "micro-communities" on screen, and translating música mexicana into theatrical storytelling

LOS ANGELES - Californer -- As CLIKA reaches theaters nationwide through Sony/Columbia Pictures, casting director Paul Sinacore, CSA (Casting Society), is sharing what audiences feel immediately—whether they can name it or not: cultural credibility. The film arrives amid broader coverage framing CLIKA as a milestone moment for música mexicana's crossover into cinema, powered by producer Jimmy Humilde and Rancho Humilde.

With a measurable theatrical footprint, CLIKA debuted in 522 theaters and generated an estimated $1.26 million domestically in its opening weekend—an early signal that culturally rooted storytelling can scale beyond niche awareness when the creative choices are specific and credible.

"For me, authentic casting is never surface-level," Sinacore said. "It's cultural fluency, lived experience, and performance truth. When you get that right, audiences sense it—even before they understand why."

Directed by Michael Greene, whose inspired vision grounds the film in community, music, and aspiration, CLIKA explores a story where identity isn't a backdrop—it's the engine. Sinacore approached casting as world-building: shaping believable relationships, language patterns, and social dynamics that make a film feel inhabited rather than staged.

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"Casting is behavioral science as much as creative instinct," he said. "You're building a social ecosystem. I think in micro-communities—who knows who, who protects who, how people speak when they're with family versus business, what loyalty looks like. Those details become the world."

Sinacore assembled an ensemble that pairs recognizability with cultural credibility—anchored by JayDee (Herencia de Patrones) and featuring Cristian "Concrete" Gutierrez, DoKnow, Laura Lopez, and Nana Ponceleon, with Eric Roberts, Percy "Master P" Miller, and the late Peter Greene. Sinacore also appears in the film as "Jim," opposite Roberts.

He credits his approach to an interdisciplinary background shaped in part by studies in social psychology and cultural anthropology at UCLA—tools he uses to protect emotional truth and avoid stereotype shortcuts.

"Authenticity isn't a checklist," he said. "It's a method. You do the research, you listen, you test for cultural credibility, and you always come back to performance. When the work is real, representation stops being a talking point and becomes storytelling."

As the industry enters a period of heightened attention to casting as a creative discipline, CLIKA offers a case study in how research-informed, inclusive casting can function as both an artistic driver and commercial asset. For Sinacore, casting is not a service function, but a core creative partnership that helps filmmakers translate vision into lasting impact. It's creative leadership—especially on culturally rooted films, where credibility lives in the human details.

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For Sinacore, CLIKA reflects a larger industry shift: culturally rooted projects can scale when creative leadership treats community as story infrastructure—not decoration.

"Not every film is meant to follow the same tonal template," he said. "CLIKA leads with heart, community, and hope—and that was a creative choice worth protecting."

"Every meaningful film begins as someone's fragile idea," Sinacore said. "My role is to protect that idea long enough for it to become something real. CLIKA is proof that when artists stay committed to their truth, audiences respond. That's the kind of work I want to spend my life doing."

For more information, visit paulsinacorecasting.com and IMDb at imdb.me/paulsinacore