GALA Film Fest
December 1—5
GALA Hispanic Theatre
Enjoy six powerful contemporary movies by emerging female filmmakers focusing on socio-political issues, gender identity, ecology, immigration, and more; and one Mexican classic film. Join us for dynamic discussions and receptions.
All screenings at
GALA Hispanic Theatre
3333 14th Street, NW, Washington, DC
IDENTIFYING FEATURES / SIN SEÑAS PARTICULARES
(Fernanda Valadez, Mexico, 2020, 94 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
Middle-aged Magdalena (Mercedes Hernández) has lost contact with her son after he took off with a friend from their town of Guanajuato to cross the border into the U.S., hopeful to find work. Desperate to find out what happened to him—and to know whether or not he’s even alive—she embarks on an ever-expanding and increasingly dangerous journey to discover the truth. At the same time, a young man named Miguel (David Illescas) has returned to Mexico after being deported from the U.S., and eventually his path converges with Magdalena’s. From this simple but urgent premise, director Fernanda Valadez has crafted a lyrical, suspenseful slow burn, equally constructed of moments of beauty and horror, and which leads to a startling, shattering conclusion.
ALELÍ
(Leticia Jorge Romero, Uruguay/Argentina, 2019, 88 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
The death of patriarch Alfredo sends his heirs into a downward spiral. With the pending sale of their beach house, a repository of childhood memories, three siblings’ long-simmering resentments are brought to a full boil. Alternating between moments of laugh-out-loud absurdity and stirring beauty, Alelí is a knowing black comedy about a dysfunctional family that seems willing to set everything on fire. Alelí follows three siblings, whose long-simmering resentments are brought to a full boil after the death of patriarch Alfredo sends his heirs into a downward spiral and the pending sale of their beach house, a repository of childhood memories. Alternating between moments of laugh-out-loud absurdity and stirring beauty, Alelí is a knowing black comedy about a dysfunctional family that seems willing to set everything on fire.
I’M LEAVING NOW / YA ME VOY
(Lindsey Cordero and Armando Croda, Mexico, 2019, 74 min. In English and Spanish with English subtitles)
Felipe--an undocumented Mexican immigrant--has reached a crossroad. After living 16 years in Brooklyn, working three-paying jobs, and sending the bulk of his earnings to his wife and children in Mexico, he's decided to return home to the family he hasn't seen in almost two decades. But when he informs them of his plans, he discovers that they've squandered the money, are deeply in debt and don’t want him to return. They need him to stay in the U.S. and continue to earn. Shot over two years in the heart of Brooklyn’s immigrant community, I’m Leaving Now is a searing and intimate portrait of one undocumented worker on the margins. The film brings a warm humanity to one of the most pressing political issues of our time, without sentimentalizing or trivializing its subject. In allowing the rhythms, emotions and sounds of Felipe’s day-to-day life to drive the story, filmmakers Lindsey Cordero and Armando Croda open an impressionistic, cinematic window onto a life that otherwise would remain unseen.
Friday, December 3, 7pm — Q&A with Co-Director Lindsay Cordero
THE SIAMESE BOND / LAS SIAMESAS
(Paula Hernández, Argentina, 2020, 80 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
“Clota and Stella are mother and daughter who live by themselves in an old family house. One day, Stella receives the news that her father has died and that she has inherited two small apartments located in a desolate seaside town. Stella decides to set out on a trip to pursue this miracle, which she perceives as her last chance to finally become independent, but Clota perceives it as a surgical and terrifying separation.” —Miami Film Festival.
THE JOURNEY OF MONALISA / EL VIAJE DE MONALISA
(Nicole Costa, Chile/USA, 2019, 93 min. In Spanish and English with English subtitles)
Chilean-born performer and writer Iván Monalisa fully embraces his / her dual selves: scrappy, masculine Iván as well as diva, transgender sex-worker Monalisa. A reunion with filmmaker Nicole Costa, Iván’s former college classmate, provides the opportunity for a journey through this undocumented transgender immigrant’s daily life of sex, drugs, and poetry—as well as a quest for US legalization. Pragmatic and humorous, Iván Monalisa navigates the gritty underbelly of New York City with charisma and charm. Nicole Costa intersperses recent scenes of Monalisa’s attempts to get a visa and their first successes as a writer with old VHS footage, snippets of telephone conversations, and extracts from their work: beautiful, raw pieces about life and survival in New York.
EL COMPADRE DE MENDOZA
(Fernando de Fuentes, México, 1933, 85 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
“Initially a movement to overthrow the dictator Porfirio Díaz, by 1913 the Revolution had devolved into a factional civil war, with various leaders vying for power. During this chaotic period, Rosalío Mendoza (Alfredo del Diestro), a wily, well-to-do rancher, thrives by opportunistically supporting whichever faction appears at his hacienda’s doorstep. When troops loyal to Emiliano Zapata arrive, Mendoza befriends their general, Felipe Nieto (Antonio R. Frausto). They become so close that the Mendoza’s name their first child after Nieto, and he becomes the boy’s godfather. But what will Mendoza do when a rival faction offers him a huge sum of money to betray Nieto? In a national survey of film critics and historians in 1994, El Compadre Mendoza was voted the third best Mexican film ever made.” —Austin Film Society
THE SONG OF THE BUTTERFLIES / EL CANTO DE LAS MARIPOSAS
(Núria Frigola Turrent, Peru, 2020, 65 min. In Spanish and Munuka with English subtitles)
Winner of the Best Ibero-American Film award at the Guadalajara International Film Festival in 2020, The Song of the Butterflies spotlights indigenous histories of storytelling and processes of collective memory, trauma, and healing in the Peruvian Amazon. A nuanced depiction of contemporary indigenous life, Frigola’s debut documentary follows Rember Yahuarcani, an Indigenous painter from the White Heron clan of the Uitoto Nation in Peru. Rember left home to pursue a successful career in Lima, but when he finds himself in a creative rut, he returns home to his Amazonian community of Pebas to visit his father, a painter, and his mother, a sculptor. Through the stories and dreams of his parents and his grandmother, he confronts the horrors his community faced as a result of the rubber boom in Peru, immersing himself in the past so that he can rediscover his own creativity.
