Synopsis

A successful trans actress proudly occupies the space in the world that she has earned. She relishes in the prestige from her glittering career and the attention that it grabs from those around her, including from a handsome Mexican lawyer. As their love blossoms into marriage, making a home and building a family, she traces the course of her life and weaves it into a new trans narrative: one that demands the right to enjoyment, ambition, desire, glamor, and security as well as flaws and contradictions.

Adapted from the homonymous novel by contemporary trans actress and writer Camila Sosa Villada, Thesis on a Domestication shines a spotlight on Villada herself, who masterfully embodies a protagonist who refuses to succumb neither to norms of success and family nor the expectations of life as a trans woman. A bold portrait of a woman who defies definition, and must navigate the cost of her iconoclastic life.

Synopsis

Seville, summer 1984. Seven-year-old Rita lives in a humble working-class neighborhood with her parents and little brother. Through the sensorial experience of the textures of everyday life, Rita experiences the world around her: the oppressive heat, the tense air in the apartment, her father’s anger, a crash from the next room, her mother’s hushed phone calls in the kitchen, the strange purple marks around her mother’s eye. As Rita begins to sense the rising danger at home, she retreats farther into her imagination — until she is forced to awaken from her innocence.

Legendary Spanish actress Paz Vega (Sex and Lucía) lends a powerful performance as Rita’s mother, and also emerges as a director to watch through her delicate and poignant portrayal of the young girl’s interiority. Rita is a deeply personal and moving exploration of domestic violence as experienced through the eyes of a child.

Synopsis

Transplanted from his African homeland to drug lord Pablo Escobar’s infamous Colombian compound, Pepe the hippo reflects on his tumultuous life in this bold, inventive cinematic essay. When Escobar abandons his plan for a private zoo, Pepe escapes to a nearby river, where his hulking presence unsettles the nearby fishing communities. The first and last hippopotamus ever killed in the Americas, he is feared and hunted. Through Pepe’s story, director Nelson Carlos De Los Santos Arias crafts a rich, layered narrative about displacement, dislocation, and the ecological consequences of human hubris. Pepe himself narrates a cacophony of events, from riverside beauty pageants to sentimental cartoons to historical inquiries. And his guttural, ghostly laugh is a constant presence in the film’s soundscape. Unpredictable and playful, Pepe is an unforgettable, immersive cinematic experience.

Synopsis

Salvador and his younger brothers Oliver and Benjamin live in an isolated house in the woods. Together in a post-apocalyptic landscape, they’ve established grim routines of survival, including hunting in the forest to feed something sinister and ravenously hungry that’s hiding in their basement. As the many dangers of their dystopian world begin to close in around them, the young brothers must fight to protect the only thing they have left: their family.

Párvulos is not your typical post-apocalyptic epic, but an absolute roller coaster of genre — a dark, gruesome, yet surprisingly sincere coming-of-age tale set in a world devoid of childhood innocence where family is the only hope for the future.

Synopsis

After 15 years together, Ale and Alex decide it’s time to peacefully part ways. Inspired by Ale’s father’s philosophy that separations, not unions, should be celebrated, they decide to throw a party to commemorate their breakup. When they start to tell close friends and family about their plan, they are met with worry and skepticism at the seemingly absurd idea. The two continue to insist that this is a happy affair, but as the preparations advance and the party nears, they too begin to question if their breakup is sound enough to celebrate. Is this idea something that could only ever happen in the movies? Festival alum Jonás Trueba (The August Virgin) crafts a playfully woven narrative in this earnest and utterly charming look at the trials of modern love.