Program

Adrián works far from home, mediating between the company that employs him and the workers who trust him. He believes he can balance both worlds — until a workplace accident uncovers the quiet brutality beneath the surface. Adrián must decide where his loyalty truly lies. Featuring CLAIFF alum Alejandra Herrera.

When a young Mexican politician loses his presidential bid, he retreats with his wife to their countryside estate. There, their lust for power festers, and they reinvent themselves as monarchs; ruling over their employees with cruelty, delusion, and decadence

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!

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.

Born in the fields of Pacoima and raised on dreams, Ritchie Valens rises from a young Chicano farmworker to a rock 'n' roll pioneer, the first to bring a Spanish-language song to mainstream American audiences. But as his star rises, tensions with his older brother Bob intensify, and a recurring nightmare of a plane crash looms over his first national tour. Luis Valdez's love letter to Chicano resilience, culture, and the cost of the American dream. Screening in celebration of American Pachuco, our Opening Night documentary portrait of the legendary Luis Valdez.

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.

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.

It's hot, and the public hospital is the worst place to spend the afternoon. But El Ciego has a terrible headache, and it's been going on for a while. Discharged from the police force, he lives off his sister's charity. His friend Román offers him a way out: work for Cesar. With no time for doctors anymore, he spends his days in the neighborhoods of Buenos Aires taking care of his new boss's business. But this afternoon, his work ends up being a real headache.

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.