NFMLA Film Festival + the Academy | InFocus: Latinx & Hispanic Cinema 2023

NewFilmmakers Los Angeles (NFMLA) hosts the 2023 edition NFMLA’s Film Festival InFocus: Latinx & Hispanic Cinema Film Festival. The Festival will take place at the Academy’s Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood.

The InFocus: Latinx & Hispanic Cinema line-up consists of four short film programs of noteworthy independent films from new talent that encompass a diversity of genres, narrative approaches and stories, told by emerging filmmakers from São Paulo Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Puerto Rico, Spain, Venezuela and the United States.

The in-person Festival day programming begins with InFocus: São Paulo, a collection of films curated in partnership with SPCINE that highlight the work of a diverse range of filmmakers from the city of São Paulo, Brazil. This block of films poetically explores and expands on themes of life and death, grief and hope, changing landscapes, poverty and marginalization, resistance, joy and the echoes of the past.

The Festival program continues in the afternoon with InFocus: Latinx & Hispanic Cinema Shorts I – Interdependence, a complex collection of stories about the ways we have to rely on each other in beautiful and sometimes perilous ways. From sisters navigating an emergency with flair, to a teenage girl facing uncertainty with the help of her best friend, a mother and daughter at odds amidst their care for one another, to an alter boy facing the exploitation of a power dynamic, the everlasting bond of two sisters at a pivotal moment and the complex intergenerational relationships in a queer family.  

The third program, InFocus: Latinx & Hispanic Cinema Shorts II – The Unexplainable, highlights a selection of narratives which capture experiences leaving these stories characters grasping for answers. Through horror, sci-fi, magic and the ambiguity of the human experience, these films confront us with memories, chance encounters, irresistible greed, folktales come to life, our own inner power, and the arrogance of advances that fail to account for humanity. 

The day of programming concludes with InFocus: Latinx & Hispanic Cinema Shorts III – Through the Eyes of Youth, a selection of vivid stories told from the perspective of children and adolescents coming of age. In worlds where fantasy and reality blend, we find stories of aspiration and perseverance, the coming-of-age reimagining of family relationships, an intuitive understanding of freedom, and finding an inner strength amidst turmoil.

NFMLA showcases films by filmmakers of all backgrounds throughout the year, across both our general and InFocus programming. All filmmakers are welcome and encouraged to submit their projects for consideration for upcoming NFMLA Festivals, regardless of the schedule for InFocus programming, which celebrates diversity, inclusion and region by spotlighting communities of filmmakers within its filmmaking community as part of its monthly program. This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.