Everything is lived with great optimism and there are “signs of life, that people are already beginning to return to the cinema… like before.” This is what Lucho Ramírez, director of the popular Cine+Más 15, said, highlighting the new version of the popular 15th San Francisco Latino Film Festival: Cinema in your language.
Against all odds, the festival gets underway this September 28: a great feat behind a great effort because it is still not entirely clear how it will develop, how it will continue, what the near future of the film industry will be, a company that has been hit hard by the covid-19 corona pandemic. “It’s like a hangover from Covid, like it has left its mark in the fact that people still have a certain fear of returning to the same thing we had before the pandemic,” said Ramírez.
This fifteenth version represents a “return to normality even though we have a somewhat reduced schedule? Last year we had in-person screenings. Sure, there were fewer but people did come. “There was not an empty room.” Ramírez added that last year’s festival was an omen for future festivals. “Last year we did well, that’s why we’re coming back this year,” said Ramírez.
The pandemic forced a change and many of the big film companies did not release their films expecting a return to normality and there were more than two years where there was no normality. Because of this, the releases of many new films were postponed, “they stagnated and there were different ways of presenting the films: certain films were presented directly on internet services while others were simultaneously on screen in theaters or on the internet. or cable” stated Ramírez, who added that “the hardest blows were received by independent films or Latin American films that also have difficulty finding a place here in the United States. Furthermore, Latin American cinema is not something that is attractive to commercial cinemas.”
Some of the films at the festival
The festival will begin with the screening of the film ‘Moe’ on Thursday, September 28 (6:45pm) at the Roxie Theater (3117 Calle 16). On this opening night, playwright and actress Evelina Fernández will perform and there will be a question and answer session plus a reception after the film. ‘Moe’ is a production in the city of Los Angeles that in the 2000s was a play.
Directed by Jorge Luis Valenzuela, ‘Moe’ is about a gay theater actor, Moisés (Sal López), who is ill and is producing a play, a monologue by a single actress. In turn, Moisés is hopeless and decides to plan his own farewell party to the world. “The theme is strong and depressing and at the same time has joy and a lot of humor. Reflect on who we are, that we are bilingual, we are Hispanic and we struggle to produce what we produce. “Sometimes people don’t connect much with films that reflect on our reality,” Ramírez said. “The film celebrates a dear fellow artist and friend who we lost to AIDS at a time when the Latino community refused to openly confront the disease,” added Evelina Fernández.
‘The Thickness of Dust’ is a Mexican suspense production about a mother who searches for her missing daughter and encounters someone she suspects is the person responsible for her disappearance. It is an independent production that emphasizes the dilemma of “what would you do if that happened to you?” She has to make the decision whether to take revenge or what she is going to do. It is a suspense film,” reported Ramírez, who added that it is always a “battle” to schedule films focused on violence as entertainment. Part of the festival’s mission is to combat the images that exist in the media that, in general, “paint us as violent, as criminals. But we should not sugarcoat the situation as if these things did not exist,” she said.
‘The Road to Success’ is a comedy and a feature-length drama by Sebastián Rodríguez, from Argentina, about a guy who lives ‘trapped’ in a small town and aims to escape. He is a mechanic who is fixing a car for an agent from a Buenos Aires soccer club who is passing through. The guy saw the nephew playing and told the mechanic that he would take him to Buenos Aires to try it out. The guy, of course? He sees all this as a great opportunity to change his life.
‘The Broken Glass Theory’, a dark humor Uruguayan film about a car insurance agent who arrives in a small town that has had problems with rental cars and they are setting them on fire. He is trying to investigate what is going on. “And that reminds me that here, in San Francisco, 25% of leased cars are returned with broken windows,” Ramírez said.
‘The Team’, by director Bernardo Ruiz, tells how forensic investigations of different murders and massacres that have occurred around the world are being developed, such as the case of the missing and mass graves in Argentina, how the bodies are identified and how this team forensics attracted a lot of demand because there are similar situations around the world. including the situation on the border with Mexico.
The festival includes 55 films of which 20 are feature films, 12 fiction and eight documentaries. 36 local shorts will also be shown, with various themes including LGBTIQ themes, various documentaries, women’s cinema and films made in the USA. There is also a small block of animated films. At the moment, 20 in-person screenings and around 30 through internet services called streaming are planned.
Along with extending an invitation to the Latin public, Ramírez highlighted the subtitle of the festival: cinema in your language. “The productions are from Latin America and Hispanics in the United States. All of them fantastic and independent,” he said.
For the complete festival schedule, visit www.cinemassf.org.