What We Leave Behind by Iliana Sosa
The Austin-based SXSW Film Festival has announced the lineup for its 2022 edition, featuring a diverse slate of high-caliber films ranging from debut productions by new independent filmmakers to Hollywood comedies and genre standouts. This year’s festival will take a hybrid format, with both in-person and online screenings planned from March 11 to 19.
Substantially amplifying U.S. Latinx and Latin American perspectives across many of it’s twenty-plus moving image categories (the lineup includes music videos, episodic premieres, and XR experience projects in addition to boundary-pushing narrative and documentary shorts and features), this year’s program offers an exceptional opportunity to get to know emerging filmmakers alongside more established industry veterans.
In the Narrative Feature Competition, Brazilian-Chinese-American director Beth de Araújo will present her feature film Soft & Quiet. Playing out in real time, Soft & Quiet is a runaway train that follows a single afternoon in the life of a female white supremacist as she indoctrinates a group of alt-right women, and together they set out to harass two mixed-raced Asian sisters.
In the Documentary Spotlight section for new non-fiction features receiving their World, International, North American or U.S. premieres at SXSW, don’t miss Mexican-American director Iliana Sosa’s What We Leave Behind, a deeply personal work that documents the filmmaker’s own grandfather as he takes one last bus ride to El Paso, Texas at the age of 89, and then returns to rural Mexico to build a house for his American-born family in the empty lot next to his own home. What We Leave Behind unfolds as a love letter to Sosa’s grandfather, as well as an intimate exploration of her own relationship with him and his homeland.
Also screening is Linda Goldstein Knowlton’s latest feature Split at the Root, a moving portrait of a Guatemalan mother seeking asylum who was separated from her children under the Zero Tolerance Policy. When she sees a Facebook post by a mom in Queens, a movement comes together as thousands of like-minded women across the US refuse to stand by quietly.
In the Visions section for audacious, risk-taking artists in the new cinema landscape, make sure to catch Colombian director Augusto Sandino’s A Vanishing Fog, Trinidadian director Damian Marcano’s Chee$e. A Vanishing Fog follows F, a solitary explorer and guardian of the staggering and endangered Paramo of Sumapaz who is condemned by his fate and strives to protect his mystical and fragile ecosystem, all while caring for his ailing father. Chee$e tells the story of a young man who comes up with a plan after news that he’s gotten a girl pregnant.
In the 24 Beats Per Second category showcasing the sounds, culture and influence of music and musicians, American director Kathryn Golden will present her documentary Santos–Skin to Skin on legendary community activist and seven-time Grammy nominee John Santos, a “keeper of the Afro-Caribbean flame.”
New this year and sponsored by the curated streaming platform MUBI, the Global section will present Brazilian director Mariana Bastos’ narrative feature Raquel 1:1. During her first days in a small town, Raquel, a religious teenager, has a mysterious experience that leads her to take on a challenging and controversial mission related to the Bible. The section will also present Puerto Rican director Juliana Maite’s Without Prescription, a holiday meet-cute that follows a woman named Olivia who searches for her OCD pills without a prescription, and ends up trapped inside a dealer’s apartment due to a rainstorm.
The Narrative Shorts Competition will present three short films by Latinx directors or dealing with Latinx themes: El Carrito by Zadida Pirani; If I Go They Will Miss Me by Walter Thompson-Hernández; and We Should Get Dinner by Eliza Jiménez Cossio and Lexi Tannenholtz. The animated shorts section will present the Chilean short film Bestia by Hugo Covarrubias, while the Texas shorts section will play Folk Frontera by Alejandra Vasquez and Sam Osborn.
A preview of the next filmmaking generation, the Texas High School Shorts program is set to screen a selection of shorts by Texas High schoolers that are five minutes or less. Making it on the screen this year are Honeybee by Emilio Vazquez Reyes; Peanut by Mayra Estrada; The Face Off by Jose Martinez-McIntosh; Vegetable by Angel Ruiz; and Waiting for Intervention by Bella Muñoz,
To view this year’s complete lineup and to read more about the films listed here, visit sxsw.com.
