This is the Opening Night of the 39th Chicago Latino Film Festival. Price includes food and drink reception prior to film showing of Love & Mathematics (Amor y Matemáticas) at 7pm. Cocktail/Evening attire is strongly recommended.
Eleven-year-old Lucía’s family lives a precarious life in Lake Coatepeque in El Salvador. Includes Short Film Silences of Childhood.
After not speaking to each other in years, siblings Mateo, Belén and María José meet to sign the sale documents of their childhood home in western Uruguay. But when Mateo’s car breaks down in the middle of the night, the trio have no choice but to stay at a cozy country hotel where old disagreements and conflicts come to the surface. Includes Short Film All in Favor.
Told in real time, "The Punishment" opens with two parents searching for their missing boy in a Chilean forest. Minutes earlier, Ana (Antonia Zegers) and Mateo (Néstor Cantillana) had left their 7-year-old son alone by the side of the road for misbehaving. As they look for him with the help of a local police officer, the couple will face some uncomfortable truths about their relationship and their role as parents.
The town 65-year-old Domingo calls home is being threatened by developers who want to construct a highway that will cross right through it. Most of the residents have left, but Domingo refuses to sell his land. The recent widower believes his wife visits him regularly in the shape of a mist. He will resort to any means necessary to protect his home. Escalante Meza’s third feature film was Costa Rica’s official entry for Best International Feature at the 95th Academy Awards.
The first Puerto Rican-produced film to premiere at Sundance, Chicago-based multidisciplinary artist Marrero Sánchez’s feature debut follows ailing artist Noelia who, after learning that her cancer has metastasized, leaves her partner behind in San Juan and moves in with her mother on the island municipality of Vieques. She keeps secret her condition so she can live life on her own terms, including joining in the efforts to document the toxic legacy of the U.S. military exercises in the island.
Winner of the Critics’ Week Grand Prize in the Cannes Film Festival and nominated to a Goya for Best Iberoamerican Film, Ramírez Pulido’s feature debut begins with a murder: best friends Eliú and Mono have killed a man they mistake for Eliú’s father. Eliú is sent to an experimental institution deep in the heart of Colombia’s tropical forests, where he performs manual labor and endures group therapy under the watchful eye of guard Godoy. Includes Short Film - One Way Journey (Dominican Republic).
Six Cuban filmmakers, under the editorial guidance of Fernando Pérez ("Suite Havana"), craft seven stories about Cuba in the time of COVID: A little girl tries to protect one of her two great possessions: a dove; Paloma arrives at the decaying house that someone, upon departing, left her, the pattern of the walls telling as many stories as the poultry farm in an inner room; after being released from prison, Ernesto begins to work at a cinema shuttered by the pandemic; Mara delivers drinks to people’s homes; Gaby spends the lockdown taking photographs from her balcony; Gallo, a temperamental trumpeter, disturbs his neighbors with his playing.
Set in the Spanish-speaking black enclaves of Miami, Gispert’s feature debut follows Tomás, an immigrant laborer with a murky past who fled his country by shipping himself in a crate. Tomás is living off the grid, performing odd-jobs for an upper-middle class family, saving money in the hopes of eventually buying a home for his estranged family that he left behind. A series of events forces Tomás out of his solitary life to engage with people in his community in search of something lost.
A victim of sex trafficking and rape, Johana is forced to leave her family and friends behind in her native Colombia for Argentina. Alone in a strange land, she earns a living as a bicycle delivery person, barely making enough money to pay the rent and send back home. Throughout the film, as we watch her go on with her daily routine and try to find a space for herself as a Black woman in Buenos Aires, we hear her reminisce about her life back home as she shares her fears, disappointments and hopes.
Cancer-stricken Gabriel returns to his grandparents’ hometown to spend his final days. He arrives just as the town prepares for its annual religious celebration. He is in no mood to make friends; he prefers to face death alone. His demeanor changes when he meets Gladys who the townsfolk believe has the power to cure any disease.
Carlos lives in a youth shelter in the center of Bogotá, a refuge from the harsh life and violence that hounds him. He longs to spend Christmas day with his mother and sister even if it means that he will have to abide by the law of the strongest when his manhood is challenged. Hernández’s feature debut is the story of a vulnerable young man who must find his own way in a toxic world.