Lorraine Jones Molina & Cristian Carretero are award-winning Puerto Rican filmmakers who’ve worked in documentary, shorts, and TV. Their narrative debut feature, This Island, or Esta Isla, debuted at Tribeca where it won Best Cinematography, Best New Narrative Director, and a Special Jury Mention for Best U.S. Narrative Feature. We chatted with them about their impressive film, how it blends genres, how it serves as a love letter to Puerto Rico, & more.
Esta Isla screens Oct 16 & 17 at the 61st Chicago International Film Festival with director Lorraine Jones Molina and actress Fabiola Brown in attendance for Q&A.
Esta Isla is your debut narrative feature. How did your previous work prepare you to make this film, and what did you learn about filmmaking through this project?
Lorraine: Throughout our careers, we’ve worked with socially charged, activist cinema, blending fiction, documentary, and experimental forms. In many ways, Esta Isla is the culmination of that journey—years of exploring how different modes of filmmaking can reveal truth, memory, and resistance. Our shorts and documentaries taught us to listen closely to communities, to embrace improvisation, and to find poetry in the everyday. Those lessons were crucial because this film required that we work with young, non-professional actors, capture the rawness of Puerto Rico, and stay open to the unexpected.
We approached the production much as we have before—through guerrilla filmmaking, doing a lot with very little. With a small crew, minimal equipment, and simple lighting, we focused entirely on what was in front of the camera. The goal was to create an environment where the actors felt comfortable and the moment could truly happen—a collaboration between the location, the character, and the story. That stripped-down approach allowed us to capture something raw and immediate, unburdened by excess.
Cristian: What we learned in the process is that filmmaking is as much about patience and humility as it is about vision. The island kept reminding us to adapt, and that flexibility made the film stronger. The script itself kept evolving. Puerto Rico was undergoing seismic changes—literally and figuratively—while we were writing and shooting: the devastation of Hurricane María, the earthquakes in the south (including in El Faro, the community where we filmed the grandmother’s house), the ousting of Governor Ricky Rosselló after massive protests, and then the COVID pandemic. We wanted the film to reflect this living, shifting reality—to feel truly contemporary and in conversation with the moment.
I grew up on the west coast of the island, where we now live and where much of the film was shot. These are places and people we know intimately. The story is a collection of experiences we’ve lived or been told, rooted in the communities around us. Sometimes it even felt like something more ancestral was speaking through us—voices and memories that wanted to be channeled and shared.
Lorraine: Making this film taught us that difficulties and hardships can be what saves you—and that they can be empowering. The lack of funding allowed more time to write, rewrite, and fine-tune the details. Likewise, the cast and crew were motivated by a genuine call to co-create. This created a certain energy on set that felt like family.
Film has the power to carry an essence that can only exist when you embrace the truth of the story completely. To reach that truth, it’s necessary to create space for improvisation and to be receptive to change. As if the film itself is endowed with a certain amount of magic—we create the moving parts and design every step, then life happens, and we allow something else to surface from the depths. To transcend, we must let something emerge that was unplanned—a kind of metamorphosis, transmutation, alchemy
The film is a road movie, a sociopolitical study, and a crime drama in parts. What inspired you to blend together all those styles, and were any specific films inspirations for the project?
Lorraine: We didn’t set out to fit the story into one genre—we wanted it to mirror the complexity of Puerto Rico itself. Life here blends love, danger, politics, and resilience on a daily basis, so the film had to carry that same multiplicity. The road-movie structure allowed us to move through the island’s physical landscape while conducting a sociopolitical study, and the crime-drama elements gave it urgency and propulsion. At the same time, the film is very much a lovers-on-the-run, coming-of-age story—like Badlands, Bonnie and Clyde, City of God, or Y tu Mamá También. Even though there’s a clear main storyline, the context becomes just as important a character as the protagonists themselves.
Cristian: In terms of influences, we drew from different film traditions such as Italian Neorealism for its humanism and use of non-actors, as well as Latin American political cinema for its raw boldness. We’ve also been deeply influenced by filmmakers like Robert Bresson, for his work with actors and his pursuit of the transcendent in cinema, and Andrei Tarkovsky, for his evocative, suggestive language and spiritual depth. Their films remind us to trust silence, image, and intuition—to break away from convention and let meaning emerge through feeling rather than explanation.
More than anything, we wanted to find an honest cinematic language that spoke directly to the story we were telling. We both come from documentary and social cinema, where we couldn’t expect to make big, expensive productions. That bare-bones approach feels closer to the reality of an emerging Puerto Rican cinema. Tropical Realism is an austere yet poetic cinematic approach that blurs the line between fiction and documentary, capturing the raw, surreal, and absurd textures of Caribbean life with honesty. It embraces minimal resources, natural light, and community participation to create a cinema that is at once grounded in reality and elevated by the uncanny beauty of the everyday.
The film has also been described as a “love letter to Puerto Rico.” What makes the island so cinematic, and how important was it for the setting to be almost its own character in the film?
Lorraine: It is, without a doubt, a love letter to Puerto Rico. We made this film because we love our island, our culture, and our people.
Borinquen is full of contradictions—lush beauty right next to deep struggle, resilience in the face of crisis, humor in hardship, and the façade of freedom within colonialism. The landscapes are breathtaking, but what really shapes the film is the island’s rhythm and soul. It comes from a genuine personal need to see ourselves reflected on screen—to tell a story about what it feels like to live here and to delve into our collective trauma in order to heal.
Cristian: From the start, we knew Puerto Rico couldn’t just be a backdrop; it had to be alive on screen, with its textures, sounds, and moods. In that sense, the island became another character—guiding the lovers, confronting them, and embracing them.
For us, there was also a clear parallel between the coming of age of these two adolescents and Puerto Rico itself. The island feels like it’s in its own adolescence—asking, Who are we? What do we want? Where are we going? What’s our purpose? That search for identity is at the heart of both the story and the setting.
There seems to be a growing discussion of Puerto Rico and the experiences and struggles of Boricuas, thanks in part to cultural and political figures from Bad Bunny to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. How has this shift elevated Puerto Rican stories like your film?
Cristian: It feels like Puerto Rico is finally being heard in a global conversation, and that visibility is crucial. For us, it means that when we present a film like Esta Isla, audiences are already curious and receptive. That shift validates the urgency of telling our own stories and connects our work to a broader movement of Boricuas shaping culture and politics around the world. At the same time, Borinquen has always had a global influence—whether through hip-hop, salsa, reggaetón, literature, politics, sports, or acting. Historically, as part of the Caribbean and one of the first lands to be colonized in the so-called New World, Puerto Rico has carried a unique cultural weight, even while remaining a colony with little or no political power. That contradiction has created an inferiority complex—this idea that we can’t survive without the U.S., that we’re somehow less capable.
Lorraine: Film is a very powerful medium. By telling our own stories with dignity, we want to break free from destructive narratives.
How has the experience been presenting the film at various festivals, including Tribeca where you all won three awards, and connecting with Puerto Rican audiences across the country?
Lorraine: Having our world premiere at Tribeca Festival was a dream come true. Connecting with the audience—which included a large Puerto Rican population—just felt like being home. It’s something that we are excited to experience in Chicago as well. But this film is not just for Boricuas—it’s for everyone. Winning Best Cinematography, Best New Narrative Director, and a Special Jury Mention for Best US Narrative was more than we ever imagined. At the awards ceremony, by the third award, I was floored—completely shocked—and it still makes me emotional to think about. It’s about being seen and recognized. I feel like we’ve had to swim against the current for so long, and to be validated in this way is special. It’s a beautiful gift and truly humbling because all of the sacrifice was worth it—not just for Cristian and me, our family, and our entire cast and crew, but also for our entire island.
Cristian: Since then, the film has traveled to Guadalajara, Biarritz, AFI Latino, NYLFF, Cine Ceará in Brazil—where it won Best Original Score and Best Production Design—Nvision Film Festival in Miami, where it was awarded Best U.S. Narrative, and the Puerto Rico Film Festival, where it received Best Narrative Feature and Best Cinematography. The screening at the historic Yagüez Theater was unforgettable: over a thousand people packed the house, some even standing, and the reaction was visceral and deeply emotional.
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