Malta by Natalia Santa
The SXSW Film Festival has unveiled its much-anticipated 2024 edition lineup, boasting a variety of titles from Latin American and the Latinx diaspora. This year’s festival will run from March 8 to 16 in Austin, Texas, featuring films from Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Latino USA.
The titles will be featured in six of 22 screening and competition sections—Documentary Feature Competition, Global, Festival Favorite, Narrative Short Competition, Animated Short Competition, and XR Experience Spotlight.
The In Between by independent Mexican-American filmmaker and editor Robie Flores is a lyrical coming-of-age portrait of growing up on the US-Mexico border. Featured in the Documentary Feature Competition, the film follows Flores’ return to her hometown Eagle Pass after the death of her brother. What emerges is a playful dance between a personal and collective coming-of-age portrait of kids on the border and Robie herself as she rediscovers the possibilities of joy in the aftermath of grief.
Two Latin American films will have their world premiere in the Global screening section: Malta by Colombian director Natalia Santa and Bionico's Bachata by Dominican filmmaker Yoel Morales. The Argentina-Colombia-Norway co-production Malta tells the story of Mariana, a working girl in Bogotá who wants to go far away from her everyday life and distracts herself with incessant work and casual sex. Until she meets Gabriel, an unlikely boy who keeps getting into her life with bad jokes and uncomfortable questions. This forces Mariana to look at herself and wonder what she wants to run away from.
Bionico's Bachata is a raw vision of love and addiction in a hostile Caribbean city. The film follows Bionico, a hopeless romantic addicted to crack, who, along with Calvita, his drug partner, tries to find a job, a house, and a wedding ring to marry La Flaca, his fiancée. But most importantly, he must quit drugs and stay clean by the time she comes out of the rehabilitation center where she's detoxing, a mission impossible for him.
Though a US production, the contender in the Narrative Feature Competition Bob Trevino likes it by Tracy Laymon stars Colombian actor John Leguizamo, who is also an executive producer. The film follows a young woman on her incessant online search for her father and the unexpected bond she forms with a grieving, childless man with the same name as her father on Facebook.
A contender in the Festival Favorite category, Toll / Pedágio by São-Paulo based director and writer Carolina Markowicz will have its US premiere. This narrative feature follows Suellen, a Brazilian toll booth attendant and mother, who falls in with a gang of thieves in an attempt to keep her family afloat. In doing so, she realizes she can use her job to raise some extra money illegally for a so-called noble cause: to send her son to an expensive gay conversion workshop led by a renowned foreign priest.
Two US Latinx films will also have their world premiere in the Narrative Short Competition. The Puerto Rico-United States co-production If I Die in America by filmmaker Ward Kamel, a young man fights for a chance to grieve his husband after his traditional Muslim in-laws demand the body be sent back to the Middle East mere hours after the untimely death.
In Los Mosquitos by director Nicole Chi, 15-year-old Honduran teen Aby navigates the complexities of her life in the US alongside her newly arrived cousin, Nata. As Thanksgiving Day unfolds, Aby's rebellious spirit clashes with the expectations of her caregiver, Aunt Magda, intensifying her desire to distance herself from her suffocating circumstances.
Additionally, SXSW will host the Texas premiere of the short film The Passing, directed by Brazilian-American filmmaker Ivete Lucas, and her partner Patrick Bresnan. The film follows a veterinarian’s series of home visits, which culminates in a painful but very kind-hearted experience with a special patient.
Screening in the Animated Short Competition for its Texas premiere, La Perra by visual artist Carla Melo Gambert carries a powerful exploration about body and femininity. Set in Bogotá, the short film follows a bird-girl who leaves behind the family home, her domineering mother and faithful dog to go and explore her sexuality.
And lastly, Her Name Was Gisberta by Sérgio Galvão Roxo will be featured in the XR Experimental Spotlight section. This VR documentary portrays the life and death of Gisberta Salce, a Brazilian Trans woman murdered by 14 young men in the city of Porto, Portugal in 2006. Uniting the knowledge provided by Virtual Reality Perspective-Taking Tasks, this project was created as a tool of education, social intervention and activism against transphobia.
