PHLAFF 2024 LOLA Award Winners
Familia, we are so grateful to have had such a wonderful festival season! From stellar films to performances,from workshops and to panels, and conversations with creatives and audiences like you, PHLAFF 2024 is definitely going to be one for the books.
Annually, PHLAFF selects a LOLA Award theme of our festival season. During the selection process, films are nominated for LOLA Awards in both the Los Shorts and Los Features category. PHLAFF’s LOLA Awards recognize and honor cinematic achievements in filmmaking that brings together all of the elements that make for a great film, including direction, acting, cinematography, script/writing and storytelling.
In PHLAFF 2024, LOLA Nominee and Award films featured themes of essence in their work. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, essence can be defined as “the intrinsic nature or indispensable quality of something, especially something abstract, that determines its character.” Films selected in the LOLA category relate to this theme whether it be directly or more abstract.
LOLA Features Winners
A Million Dollar Cage / Directed by Kyndra Kennedy
Kent Mendoza is one of the thousands of young men who spent time incarcerated in Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall instead of receiving the support that would have met his needs and helped him feel like he belonged. Now, he’s an advocate for system-impacted youth so they can access the resources he didn’t have.
A Million Dollar Cage follows Kent and the youth he mentors as they fight for the implementation of alternatives to youth incarceration that the state of California promised. They tell their stories of being formerly incarcerated young people who are now finding their voices as advocates for a Reimagined Youth Justice in Los Angeles County. The film follows them as they work to challenge public perception of system-impacted young people, face the pushback from county residents who mistakenly believe alternatives to incarceration will bring crime to their neighborhoods, and ensure that young people are allowed the opportunity to thrive.
Ninety Minutes Later / Directed by Cyndy Fujikawa
This documentary is about Vanessa Marquez, who was killed in her own home in 2018 by police officers after a 90-minute long ""wellness check."" The officers entered her apartment after a close friend contacted the local fire station to check on her. Police came instead of the paramedics, and found Marquez having a seizure, living in hoarding conditions. They quickly decided she needed to be ""5150'd"" (forcibly taken for mental evaluation) and somehow delayed the execution of this plan for nearly an hour and a half. When the officer finally instructed her to go with them, Marquez (still in bed) reached for something under her blankets that looked like a gun, and the police fled, assuming shooting positions at the bottom of her apartment stairwell. They start to call her out of her unit, and minutes later she emerged on the stairs with the gun and an armful of stuffed animals. Officers open-fired at her. The gun turned out to be plastic. The woman turned out to be a well known actress, whose body of work included an iconic 1980s movie, Stand and Deliver (Edward James Olmos, Lou Diamond Phillips) as well as 27 episodes of the hit TV show, ER.
In this film, Vanessa's effervescent and complex personality, as well as her talent and body of work are revealed in film clips, and through the remembrances of some of her co-stars, primarily from Stand and Deliver (her breakout role). The film explores her legacy as a role model for other actors of color, as well as her tragic death which is revealed at the end of the film in never before seen body-worn camera footage. Finally, all of the participants consider what steps must be taken to make lasting change in our response to mental health calls, and ask all to consider being role models and agents of change in their communities and their own lives.
Lazaro's Daughter / Directed by Gustavo Fallas
Ana Casasola, a Costa Rican journalist, delves into the investigation of a terrorist attack that claimed her father's life four decades ago. Following the lead of a potential witness, she embarks on a journey to the location where the tragic events unfolded. Along the river, near the Nicaraguan border, Ana finds herself recognizing in the enigmatic figure of this man something more profound and personal than merely a bystander.
LOLA Features Honorable Mention
A Thousand Pines / Directed by Noam Osband and Sebastián Diaz
A Thousand Pines shows the lives of migrants who depend on the controversial guest worker visa program, following a crew of workers from Oaxaca, Mexico over the course of a season planting trees throughout the United States. The crew struggles to balance the job’s physical demands and its extreme isolation while remaining connected to their families back home. As the season progresses, they become a small family, cooking and caring for each other in order to endure the punishing work. The film centers on the crew foreman, Raymundo Morales, who is in his 19th season working for the largest reforestation company in the US. When he began, he was single and had few responsibilities. Now, however, he must balance his obligations to his wife, his children, and his elderly mother with a heart condition, while also tending to the needs and emergencies of the planting crew. Spending only three months at home during the off-season, Raymundo’s job is both the family’s salvation and its heartbreak.
LOLA Shorts Winners
Bajo La Tierra / Directed by Pablo Guillen
Alta California, 1845. Alma is a young Mexican woman living in an isolated ranch with her mother Josefa. A skilled pottery maker looking to escape poverty, Alma’s work has become her only priority in life. After learning that Josefa tragically passed away while she was too busy
working, Alma becomes sick with the guilt of her loss. She takes on an obsessive amount of work to drown out the guilt, which leads to a serious injury. Suddenly, Alma’s world is flipped upside down when a series of supernatural disturbances begin to test her sanity. No matter how many pots she makes, she always wakes to find her pieces ruined. It almost seems as if the earth is swallowing her entire home- including her. Even stranger, she begins to hear the voice of her mother around the empty home. Will Alma manage to get a hold of her life or lose herself trying?
Chimera / Directed by Kryzz Gautier
Haunted by the past, a brilliant tech-addicted developer faces an impossible dilemma: recreate her ex-girlfriend in virtual reality or hold onto the crumbling relationship with her current one.
Camille / Directed by Denise Roldán
Camille es una pequeña niña que se siente sola en la escuela. Un día se da cuenta que los cupcakes que tanto le gusta cocinar junto a su mamá y su gato, Muffin, la pueden ayudar a hacer amigos. Los niños comienzan a emocionarse con los pastelitos, pero la situación no resulta como ella esperaba y tendrá que cocinar una montaña de cupcakes para no volver a estar sola.
Peccadillo / Directed by Sofia Garza-Barba
Lorenzo’s desire to explore his feminine side, is a secret...and according to his religious family, secrets belong to the devil.
With a choice to make, he’ll either live a lie, or come out to his loved ones by killing his secret AND THE DEVIL HIMSELF.
LOLA Shorts Honorable Mentions
NYANGA / Directed by Medhin Tewolde Serrano
During the colonial era, Nyanga was kidnapped off the coast of Africa, brought to Mexico and enslaved. Though forced to work on the master's plantation, he never stopped dreaming of freedom.
Based on historical facts, and using shadow theater and handmade cinema, ‘Nyanga’ is an homage to resistance against colonial chains.
Para Esteban / Directed by Héctor Almeida
Gregorio, Dolores, and Zoila are three elders excited about the arrival of a new member to the family; Esteban, their great-grandson. Through the memories of their ancestors, they narrate themes of loneliness, love, union, loss, and hope. They search through their belongings for a special gift to leave to a future Esteban, who may never know them as an adult. The short film itself is a gift that will make them endure in their family history.
Punta Salinas / Directed by María del Mar Rosario
After having sex for the first time, Alba, a 16 year old, searches for a strength she had never exercised before.
After having sex for the first time, Alba ponders what it means to make a decision that will forever alter the course of her life while trying to get a hold of Alexis who ghosted her.
Mariela / Directed by Alejandro Victoria
Mariela, a middle-aged woman, receives a call from his brother, Marcos, who tells her it is their mother's dying wish to see her again. Mariela decides to travel to her childhood house in Vallejuelo, where she will run into a long kept family secret.
Stay tuned for more updates regarding PHLAFF here on our website and on our social media pages!
