Chicago Latino Film Festival 2026 preview

The annual Chicago Latino Film Festival (CLFF) kicked off tonight in its 42nd year, promising a vast array of films for Windy City viewers. The festival, featuring 51 features and 31 shorts, showcases diverse voices in Latin American cinema, from Argentina to Venezuela, and remains North America’s longest-running celebration of Latino film. Some of these films have already been released in their homeland; for others, this is the next stop on their festival circuit, and some will find their very first audience in Chicago. So far, I’ve watched the four films from Puerto Rico, and I definitely plan to catch many more.

Tonight’s Opening Night feature was “It Would Be Night in Caracas (Aún es de noche en Caracas)”, Mariana Rondón’s and Marité Ugás’s dystopic vision of modern-day Venezuela. Both filmmakers will not only attend the event but will also present their previous collaboration, “Zafari”, on Friday, April 17th, and Saturday, April 18th, at 8:15 p.m.

The festival’s Closing Night film will be the Chicago premiere of the Ecuadorian comedy ‘The Dog, My Father and Us (Nosotros, mi papá y el perro)’, directed by Pablo Arturo Suárez, who will attend the screening. Closing Night will be on Monday, April 27th, and is sponsored by Royal Prestige and the Consulate General of Ecuador in Chicago.

The goal this year is to move away from traditional galas and focus primarily on the films and the stories they tell. Both Opening and Closing Night events take place at the Landmark Century Centre Cinemas, 2828 N. Clark St., and will start at 5:30 p.m. with a reception at the Cinemas’ Century Bar featuring appetizers, cash bar, and DJ. The event proper will start at 7 p.m. with a welcome ceremony and conclude with a post-screening Q&A with the filmmakers.

Tickets for both events are $35 general / $25 for ILCC members, students, and seniors. Admission includes the film screening and party (food, drinks, and live music). Business casual attire is strongly recommended. For tickets and more information, visit chicagolatinofilmfestival.org.

“This shift is a necessary response to a challenging financial landscape. With significant federal funding cuts impacting cultural organizations like the International Latino Cultural Center of Chicago and the Chicago Latino Film Festival, we must be more intentional than ever with our resources. While these celebrations are a beloved tradition, the rising costs of hosting such events have become unsustainable in the current climate,” explained Pepe Vargas, Executive Director of the International Latino Cultural Center and founder of the Chicago Latino Film Festival.

“We have traditionally opened our Festival with a film that speaks to the moment, or that introduces a little-known chapter of our continental history to our audiences. Given recent events in Venezuela, we felt it was appropriate to kick things off with the latest film from the dynamic duo of Mariana Rondón and Marité Ugás. We also like to end the Festival on a celebratory note with a comedy or feel-good drama, and Pablo Arturo’s latest film fits that bill,” added Vargas.

Out of the 51 feature selections, nine are North American Premieres, and five are U.S. Premieres; of the 31 shorts, five are World Premieres, five are North American Premieres, and six are U.S. Premieres. Eighteen features are by first-time or documentary filmmakers making their feature fiction debut. Around 50 filmmakers are expected to attend the Festival and participate in the post-screening Q&A sessions.

Chicago is well represented at the Festival with four shorts, two of which are getting their World Premiere: Ashley Ephraim’s “Created with Purpose”, a powerful documentary produced in collaboration with The Autism Hero Project that illuminates the stories and strengths of individuals with autism in Chicago; and Nathan Suggs’ “Lluvia”, the story of a woman who, after denied a rightfully earned promotion, takes matters into her own hands.

The other two Chicago shorts are: “Cake”, from the team behind last year’s Audience Choice Winning short “Paper Flower”, the story of a single mother determined to give her son the most beautiful cake he deserves; and “Abel”, about Mexican-American photographer Abel Berumen who one day woke up blind as a result of a rare disease and how he still practices his art in spite of it.

The Festival likewise announced that acclaimed Guatemalan filmmaker Jayro Bustamante (Ixcanul and La Llorona) will be in town to present two films: the previously announced North American premiere of Cordillera de Fuego, and Vickie Curtis’ and Doug Anderson’s Comparsa, about two sisters in the town of Ciudad Peronia, Guatemala who use art to reclaim a public space for women and girls after a tragic fire at a “Safe House” for girls. Bustamante is one of the documentary’s executive producers. He will be joining Comparsa co-director Anderson on the post-screening Q&A session.

As part of the Festival, the Segundo Ruiz Belvis Cultural Center, 4048 W. Armitage Ave., (now celebrating its 55th anniversary) will present a bilingual panel titled Cine Boricua: historias desde el archipiélago para la diáspora y el mundo (Boricua Cinema: Stories from the Archipelago for the Diaspora and the World) on Wednesday, April 22 at 7 p.m. Featuring Puerto Rican filmmakers Annabelle Mullen Pacheco (@love), Heixan Robles (Borealis) and Iván Dariel Ortiz (De tal palo), the panel will address the challenges faced by Puerto Rican filmmakers today as well as the current explosion of films coming out of the island. The panel will be moderated by acclaimed Puerto Rican filmmaker Glorimar Marrero Sánchez (“La pecera/The Fishbowl”).

Additional programming highlights include:

• An entire program dedicated to Latin American music that includes: PARA VIVIR: The Implacable Times of Pablo Milanés, Fabien Pisani’s moving, intimate documentary about his adopted father, Pablo Milanés, one of the founders of Cuba’s New Song Movement; 42nd Street, José María Cabral’s frenetic documentary about the dembow scene in Santo Domingo’s Capotillo neighborhood, a source of inspiration for artists such as Bad Bunny; and Paquito D’Rivera: from Carne y Frijol to Carnegie Hall, a documentary as lively as its subject matter, the 16-time Grammy and Latin Grammy-winning musician and composer Paquito D’Rivera

• The Ivy, the new film from Ecuadorian director Ana Cristina Barragán and winner of the Venice Film Festival’s Orizzonti Award for Best Screenplay, is about a 30-year-old woman who searches for fragments of her own past in others.

• The return to Chicago movie screens of one of Spain’s most daring, sui generis filmmakers: Julio Medem (“Lovers of the Arctic Circle” and “Sex and Lucia”). In his new film, “8”, built around eight sequence shots, Medem explores the tribal history of 20th-century Spain through two characters born on the same day, kilometers apart.

I’ll have more coverage coming in the days ahead, but below you can check out my thoughts on the four films from Puerto Rico that I saw…

THEYDREAM

With the documentary “TheyDream”, writer/director William David Caballero has made a tribute to his Puerto Rican family, one that’s clearly personal, but also wholly inventive and creative. Alongside directing duties, Caballero also co-produces and can be seen in front of the camera, engaging with his family and creating miniature 3D-modeled figurines of them. Using a combination of past and present audio and video recordings of his conversations with his mother, father, and grandparents, Caballero incorporates them into traditional and stop-motion animation to depict real-life moments. He meticulously crafts miniature homes, vehicles, and interiors of family rooms, hospital rooms, and kitchens, all to channel his admiration and gratitude for his family. In 1994, writer/director’s mother, Migdalia (Milly), purchased a mobile home with his father, Guillermo (Chilly), in Fayetteville, NC, on the same plot of land where Milly’s parents, Victor Muriel and Isolino Aponte, live. In 2022, Caballero made a 9 min. stop-motion animated short called “Chilly and Milly”, focusing solely on how his mother became a caretaker for his father and his father’s chronic kidney condition, and combining that approach with vérité footage and archival materials, and including his adorable grandparents. While you may think watching a documentary about someone else’s family is akin to being forced to watch home movies of a stranger’s family, as Caballero touches on relatable subjects like loss, grief, and identity, it’s easy to get absorbed by it all.

RATING: ***

Sat, Apr 18th, 6:00 PM at Landmark’s Century Centre Cinema
Sun, Apr 19th, 3:30 PM at Landmark’s Century Centre Cinema

BOREALIS

Cinematographer Heixan Robles makes his directorial debut with the sci-fi thriller “Borealis”, in which a mysterious solar flare wipes out everyone’s memory. No one remembers their names or who they were before this bizarre occurrence. The story starts in a local bodega, where a group of confused people is struggling to figure out who they are and why they are there. Can they figure out who to trust based simply on appearances? They empty their pockets, pull out their wallets, and dump their purse contents to try to identify themselves. One guy, Pagán (Néstor Rodulfo, “Panama”), dresses as an armed security guard and takes on the role of leader, which doesn’t go over so well with the rest of the group due to his aggressive nature. Tattooed and mohawked Cano (Jorge Alberti) is the type of guy we would normally be suspicious of, but he’s going out of his way to promote peace amongst the increasingly panicked group. The focus turns to Thalía (Gretza Merced, who co-wrote the screenplay with Robles), who finds one unmistakable clue about her past: a Cesarean scar that indicates she has a child out there somewhere. With only a photo to guide her, she sets out to find her child and, in the process, must figure out whom to trust amid this societal collapse. As it starts out, “Borealis” is reminiscent of Stephen King’s The Mist, in that the characters are all at one location, a market, and soon become agitated and argumentative when it comes to determining their next steps. Unfortunately, aside from solid production values, there’s little payoff in “Borealis” as the story unfolds in a convoluted manner, making it a challenge to stay invested. It doesn’t help that most of the character beats feel repetitive and confusing. There’s a cool concept in the conceit of starting over with a clean slate in such a situation, which is sort of touched upon but never satisfyingly explored.

RATING: **

Fri, April 17th, 8:00pm at Landmark’s Century Centre Cinema
Sat, April 18th, 3:15pm at Landmark’s Century Centre Cinema

@AMOR

Annabelle Mullen makes her feature-length debut with “@amor” or “Arroba Amor”, it’s title when it was released last month in Puerto Rico. The dramedy revolves around Yuliana “Yuli” (Marisé Álvarez, “Obi-Wan Kenobi” and “The Vessel”), a 40-year-old independent film producer who’s already feeling burned out by work when she is diagnosed with pre-cancerous cells. Her doctor (Sunshine Logroño) states that if she wants to be a mother, Yuli has two years before she’d need a hysterectomy. Taken aback by this news, Yuli opts to take a two-month vacation to Galicia, Spain to slow down and focus on herself, and maybe find a lover before her biological clock goes off or cancer is detected. Her three gal pals encourage the decision, while her fellow film producer doesn’t want her to completely abandon her responsibilities in their efforts to get a local film funded in Puerto Rico. Yuli is befriended by a witty bartender Anxo (Xúlio Abonjo), who winds up being a good listener, offering unsolicited dating advice. It’s unclear why navigating the tech-driven dating scene takes some getting used to for Yuli, but she eventually starts going out on dates, which means lots of coffee or tapas. She matches with a young soccer stud named Xavi Bizcochito (Anselmo Menéndez Arias), whom she understandably nicknames “Cupcake” and also meets someone closer to her own age, Iago (Christian Escuredo), who winds up being more her speed. Her search for a serious relationship leads her to determine what is important to her and what desires and decisions come from within or are social pressures. Mullen co-wrote the screenplay with Marietere Vélez and Amelia del Mar Hernández, and one could assume their own experiences working in the film industry and dating had an influence considering it certainly feels like much of comes from a personal place, despite checking off some rom-com tropes. Álvarez and Abonjo are undoubtedly wonderful together, and as travelogue films go, this one sold me on visiting Galicia one of these days.

RATING: ***

Thurs, April 23rd, 5:30pm at Landmark’s Century Centre Cinema
Thurs, April 24th, 8:00pm at Landmark’s Century Centre Cinema

DE TAL PALO…

The title refers to the saying, “De tal palo, tal astilla,” which is similar to the English phrase, “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” but it’s not a remake of the 1960 comedy of the same name, but rather a modern-day family drama that finds a grandfather suddenly taking temporary custody of his granddaughter. Don Manuel (José Félix Gómez) is a retired septuagenarian living in Puerto Rico who has developed his own daily rhythm after his beloved wife died. That changes when his estranged daughter is brutally beaten by her husband and is hospitalized in critical condition, and since he is the sole relative who will have to care for her 9-year-old daughter, Irene (Milena Elisa Soltero). Manuel does his best to give Irene space and time, eventually developing a loving bond, finding connection through long walks, and creating artwork and photography. As Irene comes out of her shyness, Manuel sees a stubborn streak in her that reminds him of her mother, but he maintains his patience even as he begins to show signs of a serious health condition that will question whether he’s fit to look after Irene. “De tal palo…” is written, directed, and edited by Iván Dariel Ortiz and crafts a senior coming-of-age story in which the elder protagonist must make unexpected, difficult life decisions. The film is free of melodrama or saccharine trappings, partly because Ortiz lets the characters simply exist as we watch the grandparent/grandchild relationship unfold organically, and partly because of the convincing chemistry between Gómez and Soltero.

RATING: ***

Thurs, April 24th, 5:15pm at Landmark’s Century Centre Cinema
Thurs, April 25th, 3:15pm at Landmark’s Century Centre Cinema