Los Shorts & Los Especiales

Música Y Mariachis

BOMPLÉ

BOMPLÉ takes a look at the powerful and sonically immersive worlds of Bomba and Plena, two Afro Puerto Rican music genres, and how they evolved from their racialized, highly stigmatized past through the diaspora of Puerto Ricans to North Philadelphia.

World Premiere
USA, 2020
Joseph Spir Rechani, Director
Documentary
English & Spanish (with English Subtitles)
16 min

Hoek's Delta

One accident, one victim, three women, three visions of the accident. Hoek’s Delta is, like a river delta, the mouth of the story of these three women involved in an accident, and what this causes in each of them, individually and as part of a whole. This all led by the music of the Venezuelan artist José Hoek, as a guiding thread and as sound support.

East Coast USA Premiere
Venezuela, 2019
Vadim Lasca, Director
Narrative
No Dialogue
16 min

Rego — Pray For You

Polly prepares to navigate the music industry.

Film Festival Premiere
USA, 2019
Tristan Seyek, Director
Music Video
English
3 min

Sentir

Puerto Rico's Calma Carmona is back with another seductive single, Sentir, the first one of her newest project Calmeezy. Sentir is set to be release on June 4th, 2020. With a stripped-down Caribbean dembow rhythm and deep, ethereal aquatic synths, Calma & her slinky vocals lure the listener into her musical world to feel her vibe.

Film Festival Premiere
USA, 2020
Celso González, Director
Music Video
Spanish
4 min

Hello, Goodbye Cristina

A girl listens to some old voice recordings of her mom, hearing her voice for the first time in 15 years.

USA & Colombia, 2019
Magdalena Hernández, Director
Documentary
Spanish (with English Subtitles)
5 min

Sangre

Through the lens of mixed media and original music, Sangre takes a look at the comforts of culture, the expectations of Latinx women in society, and the journey to finally love yourself for who you are.

Philadelphia Premiere
USA, 2019
Victoria Batista, Director
Narrative
Spanish (with English Subtitles)
9 min

Mariachis con pantalones (Mariachis with Pants)

Mireya Ramos, founder of Mariachi Flor de Toloache is the singer, violinist and arranger with Shea Fiol, vocalist and vihuela player. We follow their performances in NYC, California and India, while challenging the male music world.

LOLA Award Honorable Mention
World Premiere
Puerto Rico, 2019
Sonia Fritz, Director
Documentary
Spanish (with English Subtitles)
16 min

Los Shorts

Childhood Stories

Mis dolores

A simple assignment in class hurls a teenage girl into a whirlwind of pain as she struggles to hide scars her mother can't see.

USA, 2017
Gabriela Carrera, Director
Narrative
English
7 min

Champion

As a young runner prepares for the big race, the strain from his parents' push for excellence puts his love of the sport to test.

East Coast USA Premiere
Mexico, 2019
Oscar Rodríguez Górriz, Director
Narrative
Spanish (with English Subtitles)
18 min

Un dia de estos (One of These Days)

After unfortunate circumstances, Manny, an aspiring musician, must decide between becoming the sole guardian of his uncle's daughter, Marisol, and pursuing his band’s tour of the U.S.

USA, 2019
Rudy Lopez, Director
Narrative
English & Spanish (with English Subtitles)
20 min

Vuelta Al Sol (Birthday Boy)

It's César's birthday and his parents expect César to wear clothes that make him feel uncomfortable. Under that pressure César has to make a decision. Continue to please his family's expectations or be true to his identity as a trans man.

LOLA Award Honorable Mention
World Premiere
Panama, 2020
Judith Corro, Director
Narrative
Spanish (with English Subtitles)
7 min

Los Shorts

La Vida

Meteorito (Meteorite)

Bird men suffer mysterious falls in the search for where the sun rises. Through episodes in which the line between reality and fantasy fades, these characters travel both the celestial and terrestrial with a single objective: dying to generate life.

East Coast USA Premiere
Mexico, 2018
Mauricio Saenz, Director
Experimental
Nahuatl (with English Subtitles)
15 min

La Flaca
(The Bony Lady)

Arely Vazquez is a Mexican transgender woman and leader of the Saint Death Cult living in Queens, New York. During her yearly celebration to La Flaca (The Bony Lady), as she likes to call her, Arely faces a lot of challenges to fulfill a promise she made ten years ago.

LOLA Award Honorable Mention
Philadelphia Premiere
USA, Brazil & Mexico, 2018
Adriana Barbosa & Thiago Zanato, Director
Documentary
Spanish (with English Subtitles)
20 min

Centella (Firefly)

In Cuba the flight of fireflies, in the night, is said to be like a meeting of miniature spectres, weakened fires or wandering souls. Isabel invokes them and triggers the dance.

East Coast USA Premiere
Cuba, 2019
Claudia Claremi, Director
Experimental
No Dialogue
17 min

Los Features

Diga Meu Nome
(Say My Name)

Say My Name is a documentary about two transgender women, Selem and Diana, who are struggling for the right to change their names and gender in all official documents and seeking respect from their families and society.

USA Premiere
Brazil, 2020
Juliana Gouveia Chagas, Director
Documentary
Portuguese (with English Subtitles)
78 min

Semi-Finalists & Los Shorts

El Futuro Latinx

Ana Adore

John recovers from a bad breakup by becoming the owner of a seductive android named Ana. At first everything seems to be all that he has ever dreamed of but overtime starts to realize that not everything is what it seems and that the artificial is starting to become real.

Semi-Finalist
USA, 2019
Adam Gonzalez, Director
Narrative
English
2 min

Padre (Father)

Tomás misses his dad. And death, paternity, love… these concepts are mysteries that Tomás, a catholic priest, would like his father to explain him. That's why he constantly visits his tomb with hope of hearing a truth.

USA Premiere
Costa Rica, 2019
Arturo Alvarado Hidalgo, Director
Narrative
Spanish (with English Subtitles)
13 min

La Historia de los Monstruos (The History of Monsters)

Haunted every night by monsters of unknown origin, an isolated woman finds a stranger in the woods and struggles between her safety and her sexual desires.

Philadelphia Premiere
USA, 2019
Juan Pablo Arias Muñoz, Director
Narrative
Spanish (with English Subtitles)
20 min

Sunshine Room

Cutting-edge technology allows a young woman to grow up alongside her beloved Abuela. But on the brink of leaving for college, her financial realities threaten to erase their relationship -- for good.

World Premiere
USA, 2019
Nick Lopez, Director
Narrative
English & Spanish (with English Subtitles)
13 min

Los Features

Undocumented Filmmakers Collective:

This program is co-presented with the Undocumented Filmmakers Collective and the Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival.

Followed by a 30 minute Q&A with the filmmaking team.

Los Features

APÁTRIDA (STATELESS)

In 1937, tens of thousands of Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent were exterminated by the Dominican army, based on anti-black hatred fomented by the Dominican government. Fast-forward to 2013, the Dominican Republic’s Supreme Court stripped the citizenship of anyone with Haitian parents, retroactive to 1929. The ruling rendered more than 200,000 people stateless, without nationality, identity or a homeland. In this dangerous climate, a young attorney named Rosa Iris mounts a grassroots campaign, challenging electoral corruption and advocating for social justice. Director Michèle Stephenson’s new documentary Stateless traces the complex tributaries of history and present-day politics, as state-sanctioned racism seeps into mundane offices, living room meetings, and street protests.

Filmed with a chiaroscuro effect and richly imbued with elements of magical realism, Stateless combines gritty hidden-camera footage with the legend of a young woman fleeing brutal violence to flip the narrative axis, revealing the depths of institutionalized oppression.

Philadelphia Premiere
Dominican Republic, Haiti, Canada, US, 2020
Michèle Stephenson, Director
Documentary
Spanish, Créole
95 mins

LOLA Award Winners

La amante (The Mistress)

In the middle of her husband’s funeral, Maritere (70) receives a visit from Angela (65), whom she hasn't seen in decades. Maritere reacts as if she has seen a ghost, and wards off all of Angela's approaches. Maritere's overprotective son, Fernando notices the strange interactions between the two women and assumes that Angela is one of his late father's mistresses. However, it is revealed that Maritere and Angela were intimate lovers a long time ago. Under pressure by Fernando who wants to throw Angela out of the house, Maritere will have to decide whether to continue her present life as a widow or give herself the chance to feel love again.

International Premiere
Puerto Rico, 2019
Pati Cruz, Director
Narrative
Spanish (with English Subtitles)
11 min

Larger-than-life actress, cabaret performer, activist, and proud sex professional since the age of eleven, Luana Muniz - arguably one of Brazil’s most recognizable transgender personalities, shapes a new reality for a new generation of transgender sex workers in her hostel by providing a safe working environment in the dangerous neighborhood of Lapa in Rio de Janeiro. Queen of Lapa explores the day-to-day lives, quests for love, housemate rivalries in a turbulent political climate under matriarch Muniz’s watchful and guiding eye.

Philadelphia Premiere
Brazil, 2019
Theodore Collatos & Carolina Monnerat, Directors
Documentary
Portuguese (with English Subtitles)
73 min

Los Features

Ben DeSoto:
For Art's Sake

This short documentary unearths the history and body of work of Houstonian and photographer, Ben DeSoto. In a personal story, Ben reminisces and examines his photos during his 30-year run. Working as photojournalist for the Houston Chronicle and Houston Post, the window of opportunities allowed him to capture and document diverse genres of the early underground punk scene, major touring acts, rap/hip hop culture, and current events.

Philadelphia Premiere
USA, 2019
Michael Witnes Zapata & Andrew Benavides, Directors
Documentary
English
33 min

Youth Showcase

This program is co-presented with PhillyCAM.

Youth Salon Award Winner

Hip Hop Showcase
by David Molina Cavazos

Let me Love you by Emely Rodriguez

Fractured by Roberto Cruz

Personal Film
by Le'mar Nunez

The Future and the Now
by Christian Ortiz

Personal Film by Yazmin Ortiz

Inheritance
by Rey Sierra & Willem Baumann

Living Fiction by Aleishka Ruíz & Jasmin Carter

Am Lost by Vannity Colon

Me Levantare
by Naomi Sade-Rodriguez

Los Features

Espero tua (re)volta
(Your Turn)

When Brazil’s economic and social crisis deepened in the last decade, students protested and occupied hundreds of schools, demanding better public education and the end of austerity measures. The feature documentary Espero tua (re)volta (Your Turn) depicts the Brazilian student movement from the protests of 2013 until the election of the new president, Jair Bolsonaro, in 2018. Inspired by the collective voice of the movement itself, the documentary is narrated by three high school students, who represent central points of their struggle. The narrators’ jostling for space and time exposes the movement’s conflicts and demonstrates its complexity.

Philadelphia Premiere
Brazil, 2019
Eliza Capai, Director
Documentary
Portuguese (with English Subtitles)
93 min

Los Shorts

Undocumented Filmmakers Collective:

This program is co-presented by the Undocumented Filmmakers Collective and the Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival.

Followed by a 30 minute Q&A with the filmmaking team.

Via Crucis

Central American migrants embark on a Via Crucis, or Way of Sorrows from Biblical lore, on their journey through Mexico to pay homage to the Virgen de Guadalupe on the hill of Tepeyac. Their ultimate goal: to surrender to US Customs and Border Protection.

World Premiere
Mexico, 2020
Compxs Caravanerxs, Director
Documentary
Spanish (with English Subtitles)
6 min

Alpharaoh

A stirring autobiographical account of an undocumented American performing artist as he shares his life in his highly-successful one-man show WET: A DACAmented Journey while taking the show on a national tour. Through his story, the film shines light into what it means to be an American in every sense of the word except for one: on paper.

East Coast USA Premiere
USA, 2019
Lidieth Arevalo, Director
Documentary
English
25 min

Antes y despues de detención (Before and After Detention)

Before and After Detention follows the journey of Three transgender women as they seek a better life in the US as they face transphobia, racism, and discrimination. Yet, they are filled with hope and resilience even as they fight every day to call the US home.

World Premiere
USA, 2020
Armando Ibanez, Director
Documentary
Spanish (with English Subtitles)
14 min

Semi-Finalist & Los Features

Stories of Incarceration:

The documentary Change: Expanding the Concept of Justice in America, explores the impact of incarceration of minors in the USA.

Semifinalist
USA, 2020
Bernardo Morillo, Director
Documentary
English & Spanish (with English Subtitles)
3 min

The documentary Todos Íbamos A Ser Reyes (We Would All Be Kings) recovers the voice and humanity of a marginalized community and, at the same time, captures the beginning of a transformation process through the participation of the protagonists in a creative writing workshop. Juan, Aníbal, José, Luis, Emmanuel, Joel and Dones reflect on their life experiences and on the particular moment in which their childhood broke.

International Premiere
Puerto Rico, 2020
Márel Malaret, Director
Documentary
Spanish (with English Subtitles)
72 min

Los Features

Landfall

Through shard-like glimpses of everyday life in post-Hurricane María Puerto Rico, LANDFALL is a cautionary tale for our times. Set against the backdrop of protests that toppled the US colony’s governor in 2019, the film offers a prismatic portrait of collective trauma and resistance. While the devastation of María attracted a great deal of media coverage, the world has paid far less attention to the storm that preceded it: a 72-billion-dollar debt crisis crippling Puerto Rico well before the winds and waters hit. LANDFALL examines the kinship of these two storms—one environmental, the other economic—juxtaposing competing utopian visions of recovery. Featuring intimate encounters with Puerto Ricans as well as the newcomers flooding the island, LANDFALL reflects on a question of contemporary global relevance: when the world falls apart, who do we become?

Philadelphia Premiere
US/Puerto Rico, 2020
Cecilia Aldarondo, Director
Documentary
Spanish, English
93 min

Los Shorts

Growing Up Latinx

The Piñata

On the day of Mia’s twelfth birthday party, her family is excitedly preparing for another family-fun celebration with presents, cake, and most importantly, a hand-made piñata. Mia finds herself stuck between pleasing her friends or her parents, while still trying to figure out how to please herself.

East Coast USA Premiere
USA, 2019
Stevie Cavalier, Director
Narrative
English & Spanish (with English Subtitles)
14 min

Pride

The bounds of love and tradition are tested when a teenage girl confronts her strict grandmother on Pride weekend.

Philadelphia Premiere
USA, 2019
Edith Rodriguez, Director
Narrative
English & Spanish (with English Subtitles)
6 min

La Cita (Date Night)

Alba hasn’t dated in a long time, so saying she's nervous is an understatement. Not helping: feeling old, language barriers, too much make-up, and a deeper fear her daughters don't want to talk about.

International Premiere
Canada, 2019
Arlen Aguayo Stewart, Director
Narrative
English & Spanish (with English Subtitles)
6 min

Mariángel

Maríangel Espinoza is a high school senior hoping to attend the prestigious Brown University. When her father, Rodolfo Espinoza, shows up unannounced to her college admissions presentation, she can't understand why he won't take it seriously.

Philadelphia Premiere
USA, 2019
Andrés Correa, Director
Narrative
English & Spanish (with English Subtitles)
4 min

Rizo

Rizo is the story of an Afro-Latina actress, Cristina, who struggles with her natural hair during a busy day of auditions.

East Coast USA Premiere
USA, 2020
Jeanette Dilone, Director
Narrative
English & Spanish (with English Subtitles)
15 min

LOLA Award — Honorable Mention

Retablo

Los Shorts

Cambios / Changes

Atordoado, Eu Permaneço Atento (Stunned, I Remain Alert)

Journalist Dermi Azevedo has never stopped fighting for human rights and now, three decades after the end of the military dictatorship in Brazil, he's witnessing the return of those same practices.

Philadelphia Premiere
Brazil, 2020
Henrique Amud & Lucas H. Rossi dos Santos, Directors
Documentary
Portuguese (with English Subtitles)
15 min

Status Pending

Contending with the constant attack on immigrants and Immigration Law, the lawyers on the frontlines are feeling burned out and disillusioned. This film takes us into the lives and work of five members of an informal support group comprised of Mexican-American, solo-practitioners who got their start at the same high-intensity law firm in Los Angeles.

East Coast USA Premiere
USA, 2020
Priscilla Gonzalez Sainz, Director
Documentary
English & Spanish (with English Subtitles)
26 min

Our Home

Elena and Mateo are first generation immigrants from Latin America. During the celebration of their youngest child’s birthday, the family is startled by the arrival of two immigration officers at their door; a situation that could change their life forever.

Philadelphia Premiere
Canada, 2019
Andy Alvarez, Director
Narrative
English & Spanish (with English Subtitles)
9 min

Los Shorts & Los Features

Global Brazil:

This beautiful and fascinating multi award-winning film tells stories of the Afro-Brazilian culture of Candomblé - a tradition based on ancient African rituals and celebrations honoring the natural world, elders, ancestors, and spiritual energies known as Orixás. Candomblé evolved from the ways of enslaved Africans forced to Brazil, the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery. Amazingly, Candomblé is thriving in contemporary northeastern Brazil, despite considerable social struggles. Women are at the apex of leadership of most traditional Candomblé communities. The film's story is told through the voices of extraordinary elder women leaders; the eldest is 109, the daughter of an enslaved African.

Narrated by Alice Walker.

Philadelphia Premiere
USA & Brazil, 2016
Donna C. Roberts & Donna Read, Directors
Documentary
English & Portuguese (with English Subtitles)
52 min

Los Features

Foto Estudio Luisita
(Luisita Photo Studio)

Los Features

Through the Night

To make ends meet, Americans are working longer hours across multiple jobs. This modern reality of non-stop work has resulted in an unexpected phenomenon: the flourishing of 24-hour daycare centers. Through the Night is a verité documentary that explores the personal cost of our modern economy through the stories of two working mothers and a child care provider - whose lives intersect at a 24-hour daycare center.

Philadelphia Premiere
USA, 2020
Loira Limbal, Director
Documentary
English
76 min