Two Latin American films are the top winners at the 31st edition of NewFest, New York’s LGBTQ Film Festival: the Guatemalan film Temblores by Jayro Bustamante and the Brazilian film Queen of Lapa by Theodore Collatos and Carolina Monnerat. Temblores was presented with the Grand Jury Prize in the fiction competition, while Queen of Lapa was the winner of the Grand Jury Prize in the documentary competition.
In the deeply personal follow-up to his landmark debut Ixcanul, Bustamante shifts his focus from rural Guatemala to Guatemala City, but once again sets his sights on an individual caught between two seemingly irreconcilable worlds.
When handsome and charismatic Pablo (Juan Pablo Olyslager) arrives at his affluent family’s house everyone is eagerly awaiting the return of their beloved son, devoted father and caring husband. A seemingly exemplary pillar of Guatemala City’s Evangelical Christian community, Pablo’s announcement that he intends to leave his wife for another man sends shock waves through the family. As Pablo tries to acclimate to his new life in the city’s gay subculture with the liberated Francisco, his ultra-religious family does everything in its power to get their prodigal son back on track, no matter the cost.
A favorite at numerous international film festivals, including Sheffield, Maryland, Australia’s Antenna Documentary, and Scottish Queer, winner of the Alternative Spirit Award at the Rhode Island International Film Festival and named Best SHOUT Feature Film at the Sidewalk Film Festival for best LGBTQ film, Queen of Lapa is an intimate and captivating portrait of renowned cabaret performer, activist, and sex worker Luana Muniz, one of the most influential transgender Brazilians in history.
Humanizing issues around transgender sex work in Rio de Janeiro—a city currently governed by a conservative Evangelical mayor in a nation presided over by a far-right head of state—Queen of Lapa offers a look into the lives of sex workers whose very existences are battled on dual fronts: for identifying as transgender in an openly hostile sociopolitical environment in addition to making their livelihoods through prostitution.
