Latino Film Series

September 30, 2023
All films will be screened in Beers Lecture Hall and are free and open to the public.

Glorimar Marrero Sánchez / Puerto Rico / 93 MIN / 2022 / Spanish with English subtitles / Captions: yes

After years of remission, Noelia’s cancer has returned and is spreading quickly. Exhausted by relentless treatment plans and pills that do more harm than good, she seeks another way out. Brushing aside her boyfriend Jorge’s well-meaning but suffocating gestures, she heads back to Vieques, the blissful eastern Puerto Rican island where she grew up; a land grappling with its own poisoning after decades of contamination from U.S. Army operations. With Hurricane Irma closing in, and alongside her mother in the serene comforts of home, Noelia looks for an answer to her pain in the land she’s always been intertwined with.

In her arresting debut feature, interdisciplinary artist Glorimar Marrero Sánchez submerges us in a cinematic language of healing and reverence, casting a nuanced eye over the deeply felt wounds of colonization that seep into the fabric of daily Puerto Rican life. Isel Rodríguez embodies Noelia with grace and quiet power, laying bare the determination to reclaim her autonomy when faced with the reality of her diagnosis. Coupling lyricism and warmth, La Pecera miraculously unearths how mourning is not without hope.

Marcia Jarmel and Ken Schneider / Cuba/USA / 84 MIN / 2021 / English & Spanish with subtitles / Captions: yes

Siblings Ilmar and Aldo Lòpez-Gàvilan, six years apart in age but conjoined by talent and a love of music, evoke the history of U.S.-Cuba relations — living on opposite sides of a geopolitical chasm more than half a century wide. Classical violinist Ilmar was a teenager when he left Cuba in the 1980s to play with orchestras in Moscow, Spain, Los Angeles, and finally New York, the place he now calls home. His younger brother Aldo, a child prodigy and virtuoso classical and jazz pianist, chose to make his life on the island nation he loved. Both men soared in their careers. And yet, restrained by embargos, travel bans, and finances, the brothers saw each other rarely and had long ago shelved their aspirations of playing together professionally. Until 2015, when a diplomatic thaw made that abandoned dream a reality. Tracking Ilmar and Aldo’s parallel lives, poignant reunion, and momentous performances together on stages in Cuba and across the U.S., Los Hermanos/The Brothers offers a nuanced, often startling view of estranged nations through the lens of their music, each thriving in its own way. The film also presents an intensely moving, personal perspective on an unending geopolitical conflict who's next stage remains unknown.