Announcing the 2021 Cinema Tropical Award Nominees for Best U.S. Latinx Film

Cinema Tropical announces the eight films nominated for Best U.S. Latinx Film in the 12th annual edition of the Cinema Tropical Awards. The winners will be announced in a special online ceremony on Tuesday, January 18, 2022. This ceremony is co-presented by The Latino Network, an Employee Resource Group at The New York Times.

All of the films under consideration had a minimum runtime of 60 minutes and premiered between March 1, 2020, and March 31, 2021.

List (in alphabetical order):

1. FAYA DAYI
A film by Jessica Beshir, USA/Ethiopia

2. FRUITS OF LABOR
A film by Emily Cohen-Ibañez, USA

3. THE INFINITE RACE
A film by Bernardo Ruiz, USA

4. LANDFALL
A film by Cecilia Aldarondo, USA/Puerto Rico

5. SON OF MONARCHS / HIJO DE MONARCAS
A film by Alexis Gambis, USA/Mexico

6. STATELESS
A film by Michèle Stephenson, USA/Canada/Dominican Republic

7. THROUGH THE NIGHT
A film by Loira Limbal, USA

8. USERS
A film by Natalia Almada, USA

U.S. LATINX JURY

Juan Cáceres is an independent multi-media producer and festival programmer as well as an award-winning director of films. He has served as a programming associate for Tribeca All Access, an initiative of the Tribeca Film Festival that aids and supports underserved minorities in the film industry. He was the co-creator and writer for the blog, “LatinoBuzz,” on IndieWire, and his writing has appeared in Huffington Post, Remezcla, and various other media outlets. He is currently a head programmer and moderator for Urbanworld Film Festival in New York City and has spoken at schools and on panels all over the U.S.

Cristina Ibarra’s twenty-year film practice visualizes a border-crossing storytelling aesthetic rooted in her homeland of the Texas-Mexico border. Ibarra’s new feature documentary, The Infiltrators, , is a docu-thriller about undercover undocumented activists. It won the NEXT Audience and Innovator Awards at the Sundance Film Festival in 2019. The New York Times calls her previous award-winning documentary about South Texas border royalty, Las Marthas, “a striking alternative portrait of border life.” It premiered on Independent Lens in 2014. Earlier, in 2008, USA Today described The Last Conquistador, her POV-broadcast feature documentary about a monumental sculptor with a tragic historical blindspot, as “heroic.” Her award-winning directorial debut, Dirty Laundry: A Homemade Telenovela, was broadcast on PBS. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, NYFA, CPB/PBS, the Latino Producers Academy, Firelight, the Sundance Women’s Initiative and Creative Capital, among others. Ibarra is a 2019 Soros Art and a Rauschenberg fellow.

Alejandro Riera is a Chicago-based film critic and publicist who has worked with the Chicago International Film Festival, the Chicago Latino Film Festival and the Gene Siskel Film Center's Panorama Latinx initiative. He currently serves as the Movies & TV Editor at Mano: a Latino Counterculture Magazine.