Check these Latino Filmmakers at NFMLA for Hispanic Heritage Month

For this Hispanic Heritage Month, NewFilmmakers Los Angeles (NFMLA) will host the 2023 edition of NFMLA’s InFocus: Latinx & Hispanic Cinema Film Festival from September 22nd to 23rd, 2023. The Festival will take place at the Academy’s Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood, and you don’t want to miss it! The two-day program line-up consists of four short film programs with audience Q&A sessions and four live panels, including Latinos as Heroes: In Conversation with the legendary Robert Rodriguez.

The panel will discuss the importance of showcasing the Latin community as heroes, particularly in the Spy Kids franchise, and will dive deep into the storytelling that aims to inspire a new generation of young heroes. Other panels include A Conversation with Film Festival Programmers featuring Sundance Film Festival curators Ana Souza and Diana Sánchez Maciel, Documentary Filmmaking with Director Rodrigo Reyes, whose latest film Sansón and Me had its world premiere at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival and will broadcast on the PBS series Independent Lens this September, and finally Creating a Feature Film with The Brazilian Filmmakers Collective, which will feature three award-winning Brazilian filmmakers who premiered their films at renowned festivals such as Sundance and SXSW. These filmmakers will discuss the joys and challenges of bringing your script to life, from concept to distribution and everything in between.

The Festival will showcase 24 short films, from narrative live-action to documentary and animated films. These 24 projects represent a dozen countries, including São Paulo (Brazil), the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Puerto Rico, Spain, Venezuela and the United States.

Among the selections are the world premieres of five new short films by emerging talent from São Paulo, Brazil, the US premiere of Piedra Dura by Emmy® and Student Academy Award® winning filmmaker and NFMLA alum Rommel Villa, and writer-director Carlos Segundo’s Big Bang, which premiered in Locarno. This year’s line-up also includes Miguel Angel Caballero’s The Ballad of Tita and the Machines, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, and Gabriela Ortega’s Beautiful, FL. Both Caballero and Ortega were inaugural Academy Film Accelerator program fellows and previous Best of NFMLA Award nominees. Ortega won the title of NFMLA’s Best New Filmmaker in 2022.

“It’s incredibly exciting to be back in 2023 with filmmakers representing 12 countries at the Festival. It really is a testament to the talent that exists on a global scale and reflects our essential goal of creating a truly inclusive program. When everyone is represented, our industry can thrive,” said NFMLA Programming Director Bojana Sandic and Executive Director and Co-Founder Larry Laboe. “The Academy is dedicated to encouraging and elevating emerging filmmakers from diverse communities around the world,” said Academy Senior Vice President, of Impact and Global Talent Development Kendra Carter. “We’re thrilled to support NewFilmmakers LA, which has been instrumental in providing a start to so many careers in the industry.”

The in-person festival day programming begins with InFocus: São Paulo, a collection of films curated in partnership with SPCINE that highlight the work of a diverse range of filmmakers from the city of São Paulo, Brazil. This block of films poetically explores and expands on themes of life and death, grief and hope, changing landscapes, poverty and marginalization, resistance, joy, and the echoes of the past.

The Festival program continues in the afternoon with InFocus: Latinx & Hispanic Cinema Shorts I – Interdependence, a complex collection of stories about the ways in which we have to rely on each other in beautiful and sometimes perilous ways.

The third program, InFocus: Latinx & Hispanic Cinema Shorts II – The Unexplainable, highlights a selection of narratives through horror, sci-fi, magic, and the ambiguity of the human experience; these films confront us with memories, chance encounters, irresistible greed, folktales come to life, our own inner power, and the arrogance of advances that fail to account for humanity.

The day programming concludes with InFocus: Latinx & Hispanic Cinema Shorts III – Through the Eyes of Youth, a selection of vivid stories told from the perspective of children and adolescents coming of age. In worlds where fantasy and reality blend, we find stories of aspiration and perseverance, the coming-of-age reimagining of family relationships, an intuitive understanding of freedom, and finding inner strength amidst turmoil.

For more information, go here.