Guatemalan Drama NOSOTROS, Joaquín Ruano’s Debut Feature, to World Premiere at Toronto

Nosotros, the debut feature by Guatemalan writer-director Joaquín Ruano, will celebrate its World Premiere in the Discovery section of the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), running September 10–20. A striking, sensory-rich portrait of desire and belonging, the film follows an Indigenous man who leaves his family in the Guatemalan highlands for work in the capital, where an unexpected relationship begins to transform his understanding of himself.

Ruano comes to directing after building a distinguished career as a producer in Guatemalan and Central American cinema, with credits including 1991 and Roza. His work has established him as a key figure in a new generation of filmmakers from the region. Nosotros, produced by acclaimed producer Pamela Guinea—whose credits include Gasolina and Cannes winner Our Mothers—alongside Ruano, is anchored by raw and deeply human performances from a standout cast led by Jozef Coxaj, Lola Vásquez, and Mayra Salvador.

The story follows Romero (Coxaj), who longs for something beyond the horizon. Leaving behind his wife and son in the Guatemalan highlands, he moves to the capital to work as a private security guard. Thrust into a hyper-masculine world of constant vigilance and low-wage patrols, his rigid routine begins to shift when he meets Nubia (Vásquez), a trans woman who owns a small shop in the mall where he works. 

In her, Romero finds an unexpected, secretive refuge of tenderness, desire, and darkness—one that is quickly put at risk as escalating paranoia among the guards threatens to bring the violence of the outside world crashing into their fragile space.

The film's vivid, tactile setting is drawn directly from Ruano's own observations of a decaying, mid-century shopping mall in Guatemala City, where seemingly separate social worlds exist side by side. Through this confined urban landscape, Nosotros examines relationships shaped by class, gender, race, and the lingering scars of Guatemala's armed conflict.

Rather than reducing Romero and Nubia to political symbols, Ruano approaches them with nuance and restraint, allowing their contradictions, desires, and vulnerabilities to emerge gradually. The result is an intimate portrait of two people finding connection within a society where racism, transphobia, economic inequality, and deeply entrenched ideas of masculinity determine whose lives—and whose desires—are allowed space.





Carlos Reygadas’ New Film HEIL JUPITER! Sets World Premiere at New York Film Festival

Mexican filmmaker Carlos Reygadas will return to the New York Film Festival with the world premiere of his highly anticipated new feature, Heil Jupiter!, screening in the Currents section of the festival’s 64th edition, running September 25 through October 12.

The first feature from Reygadas since Our Time / Nuestro tiempo (2018), the 150-minute film is an international co-production between Mexico, Poland, Portugal, Norway, and Sweden. Heil Jupiter! marks the celebrated filmmaker’s return to NYFF, where his acclaimed Silent Light screened in 2007.

Set against a remote coastline of crashing waves and monumental rock formations, Heil Jupiter! follows two young couples who enter a realm of shifting realities, unaware that a mysterious entity is observing them from above with Godlike judgment. Moving between the modern and the primitive, the technological and the rural, and the corporeal and the mythic, the film explores a world suspended between elemental beauty and authoritarian violence.

The New York Film Festival describes Heil Jupiter! as a “dreamlike astonishment” and “a work of feral cinematic expression,” highlighting the profound contrast between its elemental pleasures and its depiction of authoritarian brutality. The film is presented in an invented language and Spanish with English subtitles.

One of the most distinctive figures in contemporary Mexican cinema, Reygadas made his feature debut with Japón in 2002, followed by Battle in Heaven / Batalla en el cielo, Silent Light, Post Tenebras Lux, and Our Time. His films have been celebrated at major international festivals, including Cannes, where Post Tenebras Lux earned him the Best Director prize in 2012 and Silent Light received the Jury Prize in 2007.

Film at Lincoln Center also announced the North American premiere of Hanabi by Brazilian director Ana Vaz and the U.S. premiere of Life of Jorge Luis Borges / Biografía de Jorge Luis Borges by Argentine filmmaker Mariano Llinás as part of this year’s Currents lineup.

The 64th New York Film Festival will take place at Film at Lincoln Center and four venues across the city: BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music), the Museum of the Moving Image (Queens), Alamo Drafthouse Cinema (Staten Island), and AMC Bay Plaza Cinema (Bronx). Screening dates and ticket information will be announced by the festival.