Mija takes us into the world of Chicano pop music through the eyes of a young Mexican -American talent manager Doris Muñoz as she handles the superstar Cuco and the emerging singer Jacks Haupt. Growing up in California with undocumented family members, she scarcely saw images of accomplished Latinas in American media. She asks: how […]
“You are now entering my universe. I am the lens, the subject, the authority.” So begins the narration of filmmaker Rebeca “Beba” Huntt in this stunning debut that traces her coming of age in New York City. As the child of a Dominican father and a Venezuelan mother, Beba crosses through multiple cultures as she […]
NYC PREMIERE After discovering the work of Oscar Torres, her once world-famous queer filmmaker cousin, Victoria Linares journeys down a path of kindred self-discovery. Through reconstructions of Torres’ intimate memories living under the authoritarian regime of Trujillo in 1950s Dominican Republic, Linares creates a world between fiction and fact, casting her family in these reenactments […]
US PREMIERE After a shocking discovery about the fate of an old friend, director Tin Dirdamal embarks on an entrancing train through Vietnam to visit him with his young daughter. Along the way father and daughter ponder unanswered questions, with the sights they encounter on their journey resonating with the depths of their philosophical insights. […]
INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE Filmmaker Lina Chamie finds a free-flowing, immersive style to create a symbiotic cinematic experience with the famed Brazilian street artist Kobra. Kobra, who has created more than 50 kaleidoscopic, peace-themed murals in New York, and credits the city’s artists as the major influence on his work, reveals his inner world in stages. As […]
NYC PREMIERE Before Miami’s South Beach became a glamorous party hub, a group of local outcasts in the club one-upped each other in an ongoing quest for the next big catch. Starting as reckless teens, Rene de Dios, JD “Jimbo” Hammer, and Shannon “Seaweed Jr.” Bustamante paddle into the deep ocean, with bloody bait in […]
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE Three children from the impoverished Venezuelan district of Las Brisas channel their pain and joy into music as part of a unique, government-sponsored orchestral music program, El Sistema. For ten years, as her native Venezuela gradually collapsed in the background, director Marianela Maldonado followed the students, developing an intimacy that gives their […]
WORLD PREMIERE In Santiago de Cuba, rival conga bands scour the sparse marketplace for materials to create show-stopping numbers for the annual Carnival competition. O’Reilly’s film follows young, innovative Lázaro, who is determined to beat “the Shark,” his older and more establishment-favored competitor. Tensions build and tempers flare as the government restrictions and scarcity of […]
INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE An extraordinary and necessary essay film constructed entirely out of a vast archive of news footage from the ‘80s and ‘90s, OUR MOVIE (NUESTRA PELICULA) is a response to the violent history that imprinted itself on the director in her formative years in Colombia. Images of blood spatters, bullet holes, coffins, and Colombians […]
US PREMIERE A sensorial film about the members of a Zoque community in Chiapas, whose village was buried in a volcano eruption in 1982. Thirty-eight years later, a poet named Trinidad, prophetically born on the day of the eruption, leads the community to excavate their former town and unearth the relics of their church. Their […]