Program

After the death of her best friend, Adela embarks on a journey through time to a distant autumn, where Elena eagerly awaits with detective novels and the warmth of a crackling fire. In this tale of timeless sisterhood, Adela must confront her grief and unravel the mysteries that still bind them—across memory, love, and loss. Between the absurdity of the present and the clarity of the past, she finds a space where their friendship lives on. Through magical echoes and remembered joy, Adela searches not only for Elena, but for herself.

A secret society of giant hot air balloon makers in Brazil's favelas risk everything to create and fly their illegal masterpieces. Dubbed as delinquents, these 'baloeiros' operate underground like street artists, bringing joy to their communities while evading government threats and bounty hunters. Director Sissel shares her initiation into the balloon brotherhood, where launching silk paper creations becomes an act of social redemption and collective dreaming.

Ana is a nurse whose days are dedicated to care for Luis, a whimsy writer who's passing through his final days of living, but with whom she has forged a special friendship that offers comfort and consolation against their respective hardships in life. However, Ana needs to care for her children too; Little Elena in particular, who's suffering from a growing and strange condition that begins overescalating and turning dangerous not only for herself but for others.

In a tropical-punk twist on Dante’s Inferno, misfits converge at Babel, a nightclub-purgatory ruled by La Flaca—Death herself. As his contract with La Flaca ends, Dante begins to recover memories of his life and joins Monet, a ghost desperate to return to his body before it decomposes. Jacob prepares for his drag debut while hiding the truth from devout parents. Timbí descends into hell to save his father, joined by Uma, a gypsy gambling for her daughter’s life. Narrated by a devil and a fallen angel, their stories intertwine at Babel, where the living and the dead collide for one unforgettable night.

Isabel’s life takes an unexpected turn when her daughter, Madalen, asks her to visit Ramón, her ill ex-husband. After fifteen years apart, Isabel now sees him as a stranger, and old resentments resurface. Yet as she accompanies him through this vulnerable time, she begins to view their past differently. What once felt like failure now offers a new perspective—one that helps Isabel focus on the present and move forward in her own life.

Frida Kahlo is a little girl who is different. Sparkling and vibrant, everything interests her. When life's trials and tribulations come her way, she faces them with her overflowing imagination.

While the renowned actress Norma Reyes rehearses a very bad and mediocre commercial play where she must play an old woman with Alzheimer's, her daughter Celeste, always overshadowed by her mother's star, decides to move out of the house. Despite the stress of rehearsals and the pain of her daughter's absence, Norma continues to push forward, but an unfortunate event will put both of their plans on hold. Her daughter Celeste will take this opportunity to mold from scratch the mother she always dreamed of having.

Celeste, a second-grade teacher,has been transferred to anotherschool and has a few days to spend with theprimary school students who started with her.Together they go through the month of Septemberfull of movement, changing direction, and uncoveringrevelations in the endearing intimacy of aclassroom in a small town in Mexico.

Las Muertes Más Bellas del Mundo/The Most Beautiful Deaths in the World tells the story of five artists whose families fled El Salvador’s civil war in the 1980’s, landed in the nation’s capital, and created art out of war.

Linda, a captivating housemaid with a unique charm, uncovers a family’s secrets and desires. Her attraction sparks power over each member, revealing complexities beneath their seemingly happy lives. Her presence disrupts the household’s fragile harmony, as the house seems to observe her, like its security cameras. Linda blends work with moments of leisure, creating an unsettling tension. Gradually, she awakens hidden desires in each family member, exposing their weaknesses and destroying the stagnant equilibrium they once shared.

Today, artists like Peso Pluma and Grupo Frontera dominate the airwaves. The meteoric rise of Tejano and Regional Mexican music can arguably be traced to one man: Johnny Canales, whose syndicated music variety show was appointment viewing in millions of households across North America and launched the careers of legendary musicians like Selena, Ramon Ayala, and Intocable. Through deep archival footage and interviews, TAKE IT AWAY explores the rise and fall not just of Canales, but the evolution of the genre itself.

Set in Panama City, this delicate drama follows two lonely souls who form an unexpected bond. Ana María, a Colombian immigrant working as a caregiver, harbors a secret, while Mercedes (Paulina García, GLORIA), a high-class woman, faces the slow onset of dementia that erases her identity. As their lives intertwine, they begin a journey of mutual discovery, delving into the complexities of mother-daughter relationships. Together, they navigate caregiving’s challenges and the deep need for connection, learning to survive and care for one another amid personal struggles.

As Peru spirals into political unrest in 1992, Lucía and Aurora prepare to leave for a better life in the U.S. with their mother. But to go, they need their estranged father, Carlos, to sign consent papers. What begins as a bureaucratic necessity becomes a reckoning, as the sisters confront the charm and contradictions of a man they hardly know. Over one final summer in Lima, childhood innocence slips away and buried truths surface. As Carlos struggles to reclaim a place in their hearts, each family member must face what this departure truly means—letting go of illusions, rewriting family history, and embracing the pain of saying goodbye.

After years undercover within the Abertzale left, posing as a young ETA sympathizer, a police officer finally gets the break she’s been waiting for: ETA contacts her. They need to use her apartment as a safe house for two members preparing multiple attacks. Her most dangerous mission begins—cohabitating with terrorists who would kill her instantly if they suspect her true identity. As the pressure mounts, she must secretly report to her superiors while maintaining her cover in a deadly game of deception.

Three generations of Venezuelans exiled inside their own country - trapped and submerged at the whim of the barbarians who govern it. Isabel, Jesús, Darwin and Juan Pablo's parents survive by resisting, desperate and cornered between flight, hunger for justice, and resilience.

Rafaela, a young nun in a precarious congregation, is haunted by a recurring dream. When she is sent to a nearby town in search of the new archbishop, she encounters people whose struggles with faith, wealth, and purpose mirror her own. Each meeting pulls her closer to — or further from — her path. A quiet, spiritual journey through a broken world in search of something sacred.

Azucena, a woman in her thirties, approaches Julio, a teenage boy living in a group home, for reasons he doesn’t understand. As they spend time together, an uneasy closeness grows, changing the shape of a bond neither expected to find.

After 30 years denying her pain, Angela is confronted by her past when her father appears to her in a dream, asking her to find him. With her sister Juliana, she embarks on a trip across Colombia to the Indigenous lands where their father, a farmer of Afro-descent, became a victim of forced disappearance. The journey from Medellin to Caloto, in the challenging Cauca’s province, confronts the sisters with paradoxes of the land, family emotions, and the Indigenous spirituality that will connect Ángela with her father's activism.

In the heart of Argentine Patagonia, Emma and her teenage granddaughter Alicia share a life built around dance — a bond as beautiful as it is controlling. The sudden arrival of Barbara, Alicia's mother, from a psychiatric facility disrupts their quiet world. As tensions, desires, and secrets surface among three generations of women, the film becomes a fairy tale of sorts — a reflection on motherhood, happiness, and the space between desire and art.

Twenty years after Mi vida dentro (2007), filmmaker Lucía Gajá revisits Rosa Estela Olvera's story. Vidas en la orilla portrays the flaws of the criminal justice system in the United States and the tragic consequences of a wrongful conviction. Two interconnected narratives revealed what Rosa Estela Olvera (My life inside, 2007) had to endure in prison for 18 years: a psychoemotional exploration of the loneliness of confinement; and the long and arduous legal battle to clear her name.

¡Videos Musicales! celebrates the cinematic artistry of Latine/x and Indigenous musicians and filmmakers who use the form to tell stories, preserve culture, and push creative boundaries. Spanning Argentina, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Mexico, Venezuela and the United States with sounds ranging from Latin Alternative and Cumbia to Zydeco and Folk, sung in English, Spanish, and French. Latin Grammy nominee Gina Chavez curates this year's selection. Watch, dance, vote, and stay for the party.

What do we carry, what do we protect, and what do we pass on? This year's Documentary Shorts Competition spans the Americas in search of answers. Four films explore tradition, survival, memory, and the transformative power of art across Chile, Argentina, Cuba, and the United States.

From the jungles of Guatemala to the borderlands of the US Southwest, this year's Narrative Shorts Competition gathers fiction filmmakers who prove that the short form is anything but small. These are complete worlds, told with intention and precision: love, loss, resistance, and the everyday courage of ordinary people.

This year's Hecho en Tejas Competition celebrates Texas filmmakers capturing lives rarely seen on screen. Intimate, urgent, and rooted in real communities, these films ask what it means to survive, remember, and resist. The films in this showcase are eligible for both an Audience Award and a Jury Award, presented in partnership with the Texas Archive of the Moving Image (TAMI). Meet the directors, cast your vote, and stay for the party!