26th Cine Las Americas International Film Festival

Program

These shorts represent individual and community topics and concerns in their contemporary contexts. The works screened in this category are eligible for a Jury Award for Best Documentary Short.

Celebrate a special section of the Festival showcasing works by filmmakers 19 years or younger. The works screened in this category are eligible for Jury and Audience Awards for Best “Emergencia” Youth Film.

Writer producer Donick Cary (The Simpsons, Parks and Recreation, Have a Good Trip) has been a huge fan of the Washington D.C. pro football team since before he could walk. Passed down from his dad, he was excited to pass the tradition onto his kids. Donick never questioned the team name and or Native American logo until one day, while watching a game, his 9-year-old son, Otis, asked him if it was racist. When Otis suggests they ask Native Americans how they feel, it sends the two on a cross-country journey full of unexpected surprises. From the halls of Congress (Deb Haaland) to Pulitzer Prize finalist Tommy Orange; from the creator of the show Reservation Dogs (Sterlin Harjo) to real life reservation dogs (teens on the Pine Ridge rez), the film brings to light the stories and perspectives of Native Americans from all walks of life in the United States.

"A stunning tribute to the resilience of Native people and their way of life - SUGARCANE, the debut feature documentary from Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie - is an epic cinematic portrait of a community during a moment of international reckoning. Set amidst a ground-breaking investigation into abuse and death at an Indian residential school, the film empowers participants to break cycles of intergenerational trauma by bearing witness to painful, long-ignored truths – and the love that endures within their families despite the revelation of genocide. In 2021, evidence of unmarked graves near an Indian residential school run by the Catholic Church in Canada sparked a national outcry about the forced separation, assimilation, and abuse many children experienced at this network of segregated boarding schools designed to slowly destroy the culture and social fabric of Indigenous communities. When Kassie- a journalist and filmmaker- asked her old friend and colleague, NoiseCat, to direct a film documenting the Williams Lake First Nation investigation of St Joseph’s Mission, she never imagined just how close this story was to his own family."

Join us for screening and party at Nepantla. The works screened in this category are eligible for Jury and Audience Awards for Best Music Video.