Houston Latino Film Festival returns with first full-capacity event since COVID
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Loading... - Coby Groff
- 09 Mar 2023
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The biggest edition yet of the annual get-together features more than 70 features and shorts at MATCH starting March 15
Dave Cebrero, director of the Houston Latino Film Festival, has six words for those attending this year's five-day event running March 15-19 at the Midtown Arts & Theater Center Houston (MATCH): Don't sleep on the Dominican Republic.
The small country of just more than 11 million people is starting to nurture a film scene that's represented this year at the festival by "Carajita," the opening-night drama about the fracturing of a relationship between a mother and her nanny that has swept film festival awards throughout Latin America and Spain, as well as at the Miami Film Festival. This follows on the heels of last year's festival, which was also kicked off by a Dominican film, "Parsley" (Perejil).
"Every year, we view the landscape of Caribbean films. And I mean, we've seen an uptick of films over the past five years, but the last two years have been really strong," Cebrero says. "This is our second year in a row that we screened a Dominican film. I mean, that wasn't by design though, it was just, these films just keep getting better and better. … They're investing in young filmmakers and you're starting to see it."
The Caribbean is also represented by the Puerto Rican drama "The Fishbowl" (La Pecera), in which a Puerto Rican woman with cancer returns to her hometown of Vieques, where much of the area is contaminated after decades of U.S. military testing. Meanwhile, the documentary "The Brothers" (Los Hermanos) chronicles the lives of two estranged Cuban musicians and brothers, Ilmar and Aldo, one living in Havana, the other in New York. Read More…
