Latino & Iberian Film Fest Returns In-Person

Films and filmmakers from Mexico, Venezuela, Spain, Puerto Rico, and Cuba, among other places, are coming to New Haven next week as the Latino and Iberian Film Festival at Yale — known to all as LIFFY — returns for its 13th year of free and open-to-the-public films and events, in person with an online component after being virtual only for the past two years. No one could be happier about that than its founder and executive director Margherita Tortora, senior lecturer in Spanish and Portuguese at Yale, who is looking forward to the return of in-person events, but has also kept the online opportunities available due to audience demand.

“The good thing about having done that for two years is that we used a platform called Eventive, and it worked really well,” said Tortora. ​“We got a lot of feedback from really all over the world, people as far away as Hong Kong were watching our films. I even had teachers in Nebraska say, ​‘Oh my God, I used your films for my classes and it was great.’” 

In a return to pre-2020 conditions, however, LIFFY will be resuming the in-person portion of the festival, with film directors and actors coming to the city for a variety of events, including panel discussions, making it a hybrid festival but with an ​“incredible” in-person program,” Tortora said.

All of the in-person film screenings — running from Nov. 7 through Nov. 13 — will be held at 53 Wall St. in the Auditorium, formerly known as the Whitney Humanities Center. All films will be shown in their original languages with English subtitles, and every one is free and open to the public (except for the Thursday morning screenings for schoolchildren). Each day will also have a full online schedule that requires registration but is also free, with those films being available for the next 24 hours after they first play. 

Tortora screens all of the films, which she finds through attending other festivals, from friends and colleagues, and from those that are sent to her for consideration. She had a theme in mind when selecting this year’s films. 

“I want films that show people’s individual expression and non-censored look at Latino lives, because there’s so much censorship,” she said. ​“To speak about topics that aren’t normally spoken about, to get to know the big diversity that exists within all nations and all people and all races, and also to showcase peoples whose voices haven’t been heard,” like the indigenous trans community in Colombia or the indigenous communities of Chiapas, both of whom are showcased in films at LIFFY this year. ​“They talk about them in articles as if they were some conglomerate, but they’re people with their own individual stories and families and histories and problems and wonderful things that they’ve done, and they need to be seen as human people and not as statistics or numbers.”

“I think that once you get close to people of a different culture and understand where they’re coming from it’s hard to be hateful towards them,” Tortora continued. ​“It’s hard to be xenophobic, and it makes people remember the humanity of each individual. Sometimes politicians play on people’s weakness … it’s politically favorable to some politicians to spread xenophobia and we are working against that. So, the idea of exprésate — speak out — is the theme of this year’s festival because all of these diverse people all of their diverse beauty are speaking out.” 

Totora is also trying to reach as many communities as she can, not only with the diverse programming of the festival, but also with its accessibility and by only scheduling one film at a time, something you don’t see at other festivals. 

“I really like the fact that our film festival is special,” she said. ​“This year there’s a bit of a duality with the in-person and online, but we only have one in-person screen. Most film festivals have four or five films going on at the same time. But over here the beauty of it is that we could all watch all the films if we want to.”

The virtual screenings are available for 24 hours each and there is a full schedule of them daily through the festival. Tortora noted that one of the virtual offerings featured on Thursday is a ​“really interesting film” directed by Medhin Tewolde Serrano called Negra, which focuses on the experience of black Mexican women. According to the LIFFY website, this film has won 10 awards and has participated in more than 50 film festivals around the world. 

The in-person offerings on Monday, Nov. 7 begin with Buñuel: Un Cinesta Sureaslista, a film by Spain’s Javier Espada. Tortora said he is ​“the world specialist on the surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel, the most famous surrealist filmmaker,” and has shown this documentary in places like Cannes and ​“all the biggest film festivals.” Espada will be participating in a Q&A after his film is shown and on Tuesday. He is also going to give a talk on Buñuel, surrealism, and art.

Tuesday’s highlights include a featured documentary and a short documentary on the plight of Venezuelan immigrants. The documentary Once Upon a Time in Venezuela first premiered at Sundance this year and the filmmaker Anabel Rodriguez will be there for a Q&A along with Andrew Kirschenbaum, the filmmaker of See You Soon, which is being shown right before it. According to Tortora, Kirschenbaum grew up in Hamden but he spent last year living in Colombia making this film.

A filmmaker lunch and panel discussion about Venezuela with those two filmmakers and two Venezuelan professors, Jorge Mendez Seijas and Oscar Gonzalez Barreto, begins the proceedings on Wednesday, Nov. 9. Two ​“brand new excellent” Puerto Rican filmmakers will be presenting their documentaries about the plight of Puerto Rico later that day. 

First will be Sonia Fritz’s Planning in Puerto Rico, about the plan to restructure and rebuild the island. Following that film will be JuanMa Pagan’s Stewards of the Land, which highlights the many difficulties facing an emerging generation of young farmers in Puerto Rico. After those films will be a conversation with those filmmakers ​“about what happened in Puerto Rico, what’s the condition of Puerto Rico, why the remedies the U.S. government has sponsored there have not worked, and what could be some plausible solutions,” according to Tortora. 

Thursday morning’s festival offering is closed to the public because it is specifically for students in New Haven’s public schools. An environmental film for kids from Puerto Rico called Stars of the Estuary, also made by Fritz, ​“teaches kids about the importance of the environment, about saving the mangroves” said Tortora. The film sold out all of its 250 seats the day after Tortora sent the invitation to NHPS. She was then contacted by some teachers from Old Lyme who asked if they could see it too, and the New Haven Public Library set them up for their own screening 30 minutes later. 

Later that day a ​“really well made” documentary by Austrian filmmaker Bernhard Hetzenauer called And There Was Fire In the Center of the Earth will be shown. It features the story of a Jewish woman, a Nazi concentration camp survivor, who spent the rest of her life in Ecuador. The Slifka Center is hosting a reception in their art gallery prior to the film. Hetzenauer also has a short film that he made in Mexico, They Wanted to be Loved, that will be shown with it, and there will be a Q&A with him after his films. That night has two more films, the ​“wonderful” Ecuadorian film called Submersible by Alfredo Leon, and another Ecuadorian film called Yellow Sunglasses by Ivan Mora, who will not be there, but Tortora hopes the ​“big Ecuadorian population” in Connecticut will come out for all three of these films. ​“It’s basically an Ecuadorian day on Thursday,” she said.

Friday is a ​“full day of films,” according to Tortora, including two documentaries from Spain, one about ​“the role of woman in the Spanish Civil War fighting against fascism” and another doc from Spain called A Journey towards Ourselves, which follows actor Pepe Viyuela as he tries to track down what happened to his grandfather during the Spanish Civil War. That film will be preceded by a short that focuses on the poet Federico Garcia Lorca. 

Welcome Back, Farewell, a Brazilian documentary about Japanese immigration in Brazil, will be shown later that day, and Giseli Tordin, who is from Brazil and is also a senior lecturer of Portuguese and Spanish at Yale, will be presenting it. Following that film will be a doc about a Columbian artist, writer, filmmaker, critic, and novelist, Andres Caicedo, who died by suicide at age 25. 

“He is sort of like a cult figure,” said Tortora, ​“not just in Colombia but all over.” His sister Rosario, who is in the film, is going to speak afterward. 

Two ​“pretty controversial” Cuban films will be shown later that night and both filmmakers will be there to discuss them. Eliecer Jimenez’s Veritas is about the invasion of the Bay of Pigs ​“through the point of view of people who were there.” Then there is Miguel Coyula’s Corazon Azul, a sci-fi movie that, according to the synopsis from the LIFFY website, shows Fidel Castro in an alternate reality turning to genetic engineering to create his New Man and what results when that experiment fails. According to Tortora, Coyula showed a preliminary version of this film at LIFFY back in 2019. ​“Miguel has been working on this film for 10 years because he is an independent filmmaker,” she added. ​“He does it all himself.” 

Saturday’s highlights include a ​“very interesting documentary” on transsexual indigenous Columbians in the Embera Chami community made by Claudia Fischer, who will be there from Colombia. Later in the day is another indigenous film from Mexico called Vaychiletik and both filmmaker Juan Javier Perez and producer Angel Lopez will be there to discuss it. Two more Mexican films follow: Oaxacacalifornia by Trisha Ziff, that focuses on immigration through the lens of one family, and 499 by Rodrigo Reyes, which is ​“a mix of fiction and non-fiction” about a conquistador in Mexico. The final film of that night is from Peru and is ​“incredible,” according to Tortora. Filmmaker Melina Leon’s Song Without a Name is about a woman whose newborn is stolen at a fake health clinic and is based on a true story. 

The final day of the festival, Sunday Nov. 13, not only has a full day of movies and Q&As but also an announcement of awards and a reception to wrap everything up. 

The day begins with a documentary about Argentine actor Norma Aleandro. A short film from Honduras precedes Elisabeth Mohlmann’s Mama Irene, Healer of the Andes, which is about a Peruvian shaman. Elizabeth Mohlmann the filmmaker will be there. A ​“really really incredible” documentary from Guatemala called El Silencio del Topo/The Silence of the Mole documents ​“crimes against humanity during the eternal struggle in Guatemala in the ​’70s and ​’80s.” A panel discussion on historical violence and the collective memory in Guatemala with the filmmaker Anais Taracena and with Maria Aguilar, an indigenous woman from Guatemala who is now a postdoc fellow at Yale studying historical violence, is scheduled for Monday at noon. 

Sunday’s final two films include ​“an incredibly wonderful film” from the Dominican Republic called Carajita. Two of the actors in it — Dimitri Rivera and Javier Hermida — will be there to discuss it. The final film is ​“kind of a black comedy” from Puerto Rico about an 89-year-old woman who prepares wakes for dead people and makes it a personal experience after doing such a wonderful job with her own husband’s wake. 

The LIFFY 2022 Jury includes Argentine filmmaker/film editor Dahlia Fishbein, Venezuelan filmmaker Tatiana Rojas Ponce, and Columbian animation filmmaker Miguel Rueda, who also made the trailer for the festival this year. They will announce the winners after the last film on Sunday, and a reception that includes music from the Whiffenpoofs and food from Soul de Cuba will close the evening. 

Tortora emphasized again that the festival is free, accessible, and ready to welcome everyone and anyone. And even though the online component is still there, she’s hoping to see people in person again. 

“I can fit 250 people in the auditorium,” she said. ​“I just really would love to fill up those chairs.”

A full schedule of all in person films/events and all online films (including how to register for those films) is available at the LIFFY website.