HUAQUERO
A film by Juan Carlos Donoso Gómez
(Ecuador/Peru/Romania, 2024, 78 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
New York Premiere!

Amid the coastal landscapes of Ecuador and Peru, the second feature by Juan Carlos Donoso Gómez reconstructs the fragmented memories of former huaqueros—artifact hunters who participated in the illegal excavation and trade of pre-Hispanic objects. Blending documentary and fiction through dramatic reenactments and firsthand testimonies from looters, archaeologists, and counterfeiters, the film explores the tensions between ancestral knowledge, heritage crime, and the enduring wounds of colonialism. Exquisitely shot on washed-out 16mm film evocative of vintage travelogues, Huaquero brushes away the dirt of memory to uncover competing versions of truth while remaining deeply rooted in the local perspectives of the communities whose histories have long been excavated, sold, and erased. A meditation on territory, belonging, and memory, the film excavates the fragile line between truth and fiction, authenticity, and forgery, reclaiming the contemporary Andean world as a living, contested landscape still haunted by the legacy of colonialism.

Wednesday, July 15, 7pm
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Ave. (at 2nd St.), New York City

Screening followed by a Q&A with director Juan Carlos Donoso Gómez

Tickets and more information:
https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/series/59363

Watch the trailer:

RITAS
(Oswaldo Santana and Karen Harley, Brazil, 2025, 83 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
U.S. Premiere
Co-presented by Brasil Summerfest 

A vibrant, irreverent, and deeply personal portrait of Brazilian music icon Rita Lee, told largely in her own words through her final, previously unseen interview. Directed by Oswaldo Santana and co-directed by Karen Harley, the documentary weaves together beloved songs from across Lee’s groundbreaking career with intimate home videos she recorded herself and a rich array of archival materials. Funny, candid, and profoundly moving, Ritas captures the irreverent spirit, creative genius, and enduring legacy of Brazil’s “Queen of Rock,” offering longtime fans a poignant farewell while introducing new audiences to one of the country’s most influential artists and beloved cultural icons.

Sunday, July 12, 3pm
Museum of the Moving Image
36-01 35th Ave, Queens, New York City
Tickets and more information: https://movingimage.org/event/ritas/

Watch the trailer:

SILVIA PRIETO
(Martín Rejtman, Argentina, 1999. En español)

El día de su cumpleaños número 27, Silvia Prieto toma una decisión tajante: cambiar de vida. Pero su intento de reinventarse se transforma en una deriva existencial cuando descubre que hay otras mujeres que llevan exactamente su mismo nombre. Entre diálogos filosos y una sensibilidad pop atravesada por la cultura de consumo, Silvia se lanza a una búsqueda tan absurda como entrañable para recuperar una idea propia de sí misma. Escrita y dirigida por Martín Rejtman, esta comedia de precisión minimalista y humor imperturbable se convirtió en una piedra fundacional del Nuevo Cine Argentino, marcando a toda una generación de cineastas con su estilo inconfundible.

En la celebración de los 25 años de Cinema Tropical —la organización sin fines de lucro dedicada a la promoción del cine latinoamericano en Estados Unidos—Silvia Prieto vuelve a Bogotá en una deslumbrante restauración en 4K: la misma película con la que la organización inició su historia y con la que irrumpió una nueva generación de cineastas latinoamericanos.

Sábado 11 de julio, 7:30pm
Cinemateca de Bogotá

THE MEMORY OF BUTTERFLIES / LA MEMORIA DE LAS MARIPOSAS
A film by Tatiana Fuentes Sadowski
(Peru/Portugal, 2025, 77 min. In Spanish and Murui Huitoto with English subtitles)
U.S. Premiere!

The Memory of Butterflies begins with a single archival image of two Indigenous men, Omarino and Aredomi, taken from the Amazon to Europe during the rubber boom—and unfolds into a haunting, deeply personal exploration of history, memory, and colonial violence. Blending archival materials with hand-processed imagery and contemporary encounters, the powerful and evocative debut feature by Tatiana Fuentes Sadowski moves between past and present to question official narratives and recover voices long erased. At once an act of investigation and a cinematic invocation, it opens a space where the living and the dead remain in dialogue.

Preceded by LA HUELLA
(Tatiana Fuentes Sadowski, France, 2012, 18 min.)
Using a photographic archive and forensic testimony, the film explores the lasting traces of Peru’s civil war.

Wednesday, June 17, 7pm
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Avenue (at 2nd St.)
Tickets: https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/series/59363

Followed by Q&A with editor EB Landesberg and guest curator Andrea Avidad.

UNDER THE FLAGS, THE SUN / BAJO LAS BANDERAS, EL SOL
by Juanjo Pereira
(Paraguay/Argentina/USA/France/Germany, 2025, 92 min. In Guarani, Spanish, German, French, English)

In 1989, the fall of Alfredo Stroessner’s 35-year dictatorship in Paraguay brought an end to one of the world’s longest authoritarian regimes—and left behind a vast audiovisual archive once used to shape national identity and glorify power. Decades later, newly recovered footage from Paraguay and abroad—newsreels, television broadcasts, propaganda films, and declassified materials—reveals the hidden machinery of the regime. Moving across formats and histories, this striking debut feature by Juanjo Pereira becomes an excavation of memory and media, exposing how images were used to construct ideology, sustain international alliances, and normalize repression, while reflecting on a present still marked by the legacy of dictatorship.

Thursday, May 7, 7pm
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Avenue (at 2nd St.)
For tickets and more information visit: https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/series/59363

Presented as part of Lost & Found:  Cine(ma)s Latinoamericanos Re-unidos, co-programmed by Matías Piñeiro and Carlos A. Gutiérrez.

Watch the trailer:

Prismatic Ground Presents:

COBRE / COPPER
(Nicolas Pereda, Mexico, 2025, 78 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Co-presented by Cinema Tropical

In a remote mining town, Lázaro, a young worker at a copper mine, stumbles upon a dead body on his way to work—making him the target of suspicion from both his community and even his own family. As a respiratory illness prevents him from working, doubts about his true condition grow, fueling rumors of his possible involvement in the tragedy. Lázaro finds solace in his aunt, only a few years his senior, as their relationship takes on an increasingly ambiguous nature. While the truth about the crime looms, Lázaro must confront not only the weight of suspicion, but also that of his own desire.

Wednesday, April 29, 9pm
Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM)
30 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn, New York City
Tickets and more information: https://www.bam.org/film/2026/cobre

THE RESERVE / LA RESERVA
(Pablo Pérez Lombardini, Mexico/Qatar, 2025, 92 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)

Based on real testimonies, The Reserve, the striking debut by Pablo Pérez Lombardini, is a gripping environmental thriller about a determined forest ranger in the highlands of Chiapas who rallies her community to expel a group of invading loggers from their protected reserve—only to unleash a far greater threat. As fear takes hold and the community turns against her, Julia is left to confront the danger alone, facing death threats and the gradual loss of everything she holds dear—except her dignity.

A standout at the Telluride Film Festival, the film won Best Mexican Film and Best Actress at the Morelia Film Festival, shedding light on the urgent, ongoing challenges facing conservationists across Latin America, while offering a haunting portrayal of strength, sacrifice, and dignity amid the fight for environmental justice.

Wednesday, April 22, 7pm
Fox Tucson Theatre
17 W Congress St., Tucson, AZ
For tickets and more information visit: https://foxtucson.com/

Watch the trailer:

NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIGHT / NOSTALGIA DE LA LUZ
(Patricio Guzmán, France/Germany/Chile, 2011, 90 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)

In his stirring 2010 visual essay, Chilean master documentarian Patricio Guzmán turns to the remote, high-altitude Atacama Desert to craft a meditation on memory, history, and eternity. Beneath some of the clearest skies on Earth, astronomers gather to study the origins of the universe. Yet the desert also preserves traces of the past—from pre-Columbian mummies to the remains of political prisoners disappeared after Chile’s 1973 military coup. In this otherworldly landscape, earthly and celestial quests converge: archaeologists uncover ancient civilizations, women search for their missing loved ones, and astronomers scan the heavens for distant galaxies. Nostalgia for the Light opens Guzmán’s celebrated trilogy exploring landscape, memory, and Chile’s unresolved past. Cinema Tropical continues the celebration of its 25th anniversary with landmark Latin American films of the new millennium.

Wednesday, April 22, 7pm
Brooklyn Academy of Music
30 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn, New York City

For tickets and more information visit:
www.bam.org/film/2026/cinema-tropical-nostalgia-for-the-light

OUR DEMAND / SENDA INDIA
(Daniela Seggiaro, Argentina, 2023, 80 min. In Spanish and Wichí with English subtitles)
U.S. Premiere!

In the early 1990s, as the Wichí community of northern Argentina fought for legal recognition of their ancestral territory, a young man named Miguel Ángel Lorenzo began filming what he knew best: everyday life. With a Hi8 camcorder in hand, he recorded walks through the forest, and shared routines, school gatherings, visits between neighbors, and moments when the outside world intruded – including the presence of a judge. Decades later, filmmaker Daniela Seggiaro returns to these images, assembling a film shaped by Indigenous perspectives and community memory. Our Demand moves beyond the courtroom to reveal a worldview in which land is not property but a living relationship, where language, forest, and communal life are inseparable. The result is a quietly powerful testament to a struggle that is at once legal, cultural, and profoundly existential.

Thursday, April 16, 7:30pm
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Avenue (at 2nd St.)
For tickets and more information visit: https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/series/59363

Presented as part of Lost & Found:  Cine(ma)s Latinoamericanos Re-unidos, co-programmed by Matías Piñeiro and Carlos A. Gutiérrez.

Watch the trailer:

Cinema Tucsón Presents:

ASCO: WITHOUT PERMISSION
(Travis Gutiérrez Senger, USA/Mexico, 90 min. In English)

Executive produced by Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna, Travis Gutiérrez Senger’s engrossing, genre-defying debut feature explores the revolutionary Chicano art group ASCO, who transformed 1970s LA into a bold, defiant canvas. Merging activism with radical artmaking, the artistic collective confronted the norms of Hollywood, museums, and media, and have since been recognized among the 20th century’s most significant artists. ASCO: Without Permission, winner of the Cinema Tropical Award for Best U.S. Latinx Film, captures their boundary-breaking spirit with an inventive approach, weaving nonfiction and fiction together with a new generation of artists. The result is more than a profile—it’s a reimagining of what’s possible in art and cinema, celebrating iconoclasts who were decades ahead of their time.

Wednesday, March 18, 7pm
Fox Tucson Theatre

The Flaherty Film Seminar and Cinema Tropical join forces to present a special screening celebrating the organizations' 70th and 25th anniversaries, respectively. Curated by Zaina Bseiso and Carlos A. Gutiérrez,  this incisive and defiant program of short films originated from their collaboration at the 70th Flaherty Film Seminar and features artists from across the Global South—Palestine, Puerto Rico, Morocco, Yemen, Lebanon, and Latinx USA—who reclaim humor, popular culture, and aesthetics as spaces of resistance and resilience amid the ominous threat of colonial forces. Timely and resonant, this collection of shorts offers a poignant yet playful polyphony of voices grappling with an increasingly nonsensical geopolitical world.

Program:
DÍA DE LA INDEPENDENCIA (Alex Rivera, USA, 1997, 2 min.)
LIFE ON THE CAPS 2: GUIDED TOUR OF A SPILL (Meriem Bennani, Morocco, 2020, 15 min.)
BETHLEHEM BANDOLERO (Larissa Sansour, Palestine, 2004, 6 min.)
RED CHEWING GUM (Akram Zaatari, Lebanon, 2000, 11 min.)
1941 (Asim Aziz, Yemen, 2021, 4 min.)
THE ENVOY (EVEN IF IT’S NOT MORE THAN A TRUCE) (Sofía Gallisá Muriente, Puerto Rico, 2022, 24 min.)
TROKAS DURAS (Jazmin Garcia, USA, 2025, 17 min.)
Total running time: ca. 95 min.

Wednesday, March 18, 7pm
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Avenue (at 2nd St.), New York City

Tickets and more information:  https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/

Screening followed by a discussion and reception.
Welcome remarks by Juana Suárez, Trustee of the Flaherty Film Seminar and Associate Professor and Director of NYU’s MIAP.

Cinema Tropical at 25:
SILVIA PRIETO

Directed by Martín Rejtman
(Argentina, 1999, 92 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)

With Rosario Bléfari, Valeria Bertuccelli, Gabriel Fernández Capello, Marcelo Zanelli, Susana Pampín, Luis Mancini, Mirta Busnelli

On her 27th birthday, Silvia Prieto decides to change her life only to spiral into an identity crisis when she discovers other women share her name. Buoyed by quick wit and a pop-infused eye for consumer culture, Silvia embarks on a wry, screwball-inspired quest for self-definition. This hilariously absurd deadpan comedy, written and directed by Latin American cinema trailblazer Martín Rejtman, became a landmark of New Argentine Cinema, inspiring a wave of filmmakers with its signature minimalism. To celebrate Cinema Tropical’s 25th anniversary, Silvia Prieto—the very first film screened by the organization—returns to New York, this time in dazzling 4K.

Wednesday, March 11, 7pm
Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM)
30 Lafayette Ave., Brooklyn, New York City

For tickets and more information:
https://www.bam.org/film/2026/cinema-tropical-silvia-prieto

The 3rd Annual Latinx Film Showcase

Presented by The Latinx Project at NYU and Cinema Tropical

The Latinx Project at NYU and Cinema Tropical present the third edition of the Latinx Film Showcase, a one-day series celebrating the remarkable work of U.S. Latinx filmmakers. This year’s program brings together three distinct and compelling films that reflect the breadth of contemporary U.S. Latinx cinema, ranging from urgent documentary to gripping narrative fiction, all nominated at the 16th edition of the Cinema Tropical Awards.

The lineup includes Uvalde Mom, Anayansi Prado’s searing documentary portrait of courage and accountability in the aftermath of the 2022 mass shooting; ASCO: Without Permission, Travis Gutiérrez Senger’s genre-defying exploration of the radical Chicano art collective that reshaped Los Angeles in the 1970s; and Mad Bills to Pay (or Destiny, Dile Que No Soy Malo), Joel Alfonso Vargas’s vibrant and deeply personal debut narrative set in a Dominican American community in the Bronx. Select screenings will be followed by talkback sessions with filmmakers.

Saturday, March 7
Cantor Center at New York University
36 East 8th Street, New York City
Free Admission with RSVP. Seating is first-come, first-served.

MORICHALES
A film by Chris Gude
(USA/Colombia, 2024, 83 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
U.S. Premiere!

The third feature by director Chris Gude (Mambo Cool) is a lyrical, immersive documentary that journeys deep into Venezuela’s Guayana region, where vast gold reserves lie hidden beneath groves of moriche palms. Guided by a fictional explorer’s voice, the film moves from remote jungle mining camps to the banks of the Orinoco River, mapping the extraction and commercialization of gold while questioning extractive practices and humanity’s fraught relationship with the land.

Using evocative visuals, hand-drawn illustrations, 16mm film, and atmospheric sound, and through the voices and labors of the miners, the film explores the destructive relationship between people, land, and the global demand for resources. Juxtaposing the slow processes of geology with the urgency of extractive capitalism, Morichales becomes a poetic meditation on fortune, survival, ecological cost, nature, labor, and value.

Thursday, March 5, 7:30pm
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Avenue (at 2nd St.)
For tickets and more information visit: https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/series/59363

Presented as part of Lost & Found:  Cine(ma)s Latinoamericanos Re-unidos, co-programmed by Matías Piñeiro and Carlos A. Gutiérrez.

Watch the trailer:

THE BLUE TRAIL / O ÚLTIMO AZUL
A film by Gabriel Mascaro
(Brazil/Mexico/Netherlands/Chile, 2025, 85 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)

Winner of the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the Berlin Film Festival, the latest film from visionary director Gabriel Mascaro (Neon Bull) is a striking dystopian drama set in near‑future Brazil, where the government relocates seniors to isolated colonies under the guise of economic “well‑being.” Seventy‑seven‑year‑old Tereza refuses to accept forced retirement and the loss of her autonomy. Determined to fulfill a lifelong dream of flying, she embarks on a clandestine river journey through the Amazon, encountering unexpected companions who help her reclaim freedom and possibility.

Anchored by a powerful lead performance from Denise Weinberg and co-starring Rodrigo Santoro, the film unfolds as a lyrical, immersive adventure celebrating resilience, intergenerational connection, and the courage to defy ageist and authoritarian constraints.

Sunday, March 1, 3pm
Museum of the Moving Image
36-01 35 Avenue, Astoria, NY 11106
Tickets and more information: https://movingimage.org/event/the-blue-trail/

Watch the trailer:

OCA 
A film by Karla Badillo
(Mexico/Argentina, 2025, 109 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Q&A with the director

Winner of the Silver Hugo Award in the New Directors Competition at the Chicago International Film Festival, Oca is the atmospheric and mystical debut feature by Karla Badillo, telling the story of Rafaela, a young nun from a dwindling congregation who embarks on a pilgrimage after the arrival of a new archbishop. Along the way, she encounters travelers from diverse walks of life, and her journey becomes a lyrical and often poignant meditation on faith, doubt, and resilience in a world shaped by both spiritual and material forces.

Featuring a stellar ensemble cast of professional actors—including Natalia Solián (Huesera: The Bone Woman), Cecilia Suárez (The House of Flowers), and Raúl Briones (La Cocina)—alongside non-professional actors, the film offers a quietly critical lens on devotion and institutional life, reimagining the spiritual cinema of Luis Buñuel through a contemporary, distinctly female perspective and tracing the winding path between belief, destiny, and self-discovery.

Wednesday, February 25, 7pm
Fox Tucson Theatre
17 West Congress Street, Tucson, AZ
Tickets $12
To purchase tickets and more information visit: www.foxtucson.com

Watch the trailer:

PUNKU
A film by J.D. Fernández Molero
(Peru/Spain, 2025, 132 min. In Spanish, Quechua, Matsigenka with English subtitles)
U.S. Premiere. Q&A with director J.D. Fernández Molero.

Deep in the Peruvian Amazon lowlands, Meshia, a Matsigenka Indigenous teenager, discovers Ivan, a boy who vanished two years ago and was presumed dead. Determined to save him, she travels upriver to a town, where he urgently needs eye surgery to halt an infection threatening his sight. As Ivan wrestles with the trauma of his mysterious past, Meshia becomes entranced by urban life and enters a local beauty pageant, chasing fragile dreams of transformation. A quiet bond forms between them, but when a stranger with sinister intentions appears, their connection is put at risk. Shot on 16mm, Super 8, and digital formats, Punku—“gateway” in Quechua—, the latest film by J.D. Fernández Molero, playfully blurs the line between the seen and unseen, opening a portal into overlapping realities.

Wednesday, February 18, 7pm
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Avenue (at 2nd St.)
For tickets and more information visit: https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/series/59363

Presented as part of Lost & Found:  Cine(ma)s Latinoamericanos Re-unidos, co-programmed by Matías Piñeiro and Carlos A. Gutiérrez.

Watch the trailer: