07/12/2019
LOS ANGELES LATINO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES 2019 PROGRAMMING LINE-UP INCLUDING
SEVEN WORLD PREMIERES
SUNDANCE AUDIENCE AWARD WINNER, THE INFILTRATORS, TO OPEN THE FESTIVAL ON WEDNESDAY, JULY 31 AT
THE TCL CHINESE THEATRE
PROGRAM INCLUDES 15 FEATURES - TEN DIRECTED BY WOMEN, PLUS 17 SHORTS, FIVE EPISODICS, AND SPECIAL EVENTS INCLUDING A MASTERCLASS ON LATINX IN ANIMATION
LOS ANGELES, CA July 9, 2019 – Academy Award®-nominated actor Edward James Olmos today announced the program that will be featured at the 2019 Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival (LALIFF) which runs Wednesday, July 31 through Sunday, August 4 at the TCL Chinese Theatres. As the largest Latinx film festival to be hosted in Los Angeles, this year the festival will shine a spotlight on US-born Latinx filmmakers. This year’s program includes 15 features, 17 shorts, five episodics, two special events and two Latinx podcasts live from the festival.
This year’s program will open with Cristina Ibarra and Alex Rivera’s The Infiltrators, which won the Audience Award: NEXT and The NEXT Innovator Prize at Sundance earlier this year. The film, a mixture of documentary and narrative, focuses on a real-life rag-tag group of undocumented youth – Dreamers – that get deliberately detained by Border Patrol in order to infiltrate a shadowy, for-profit detention center. The film is a suspenseful telling of this high-stakes mission - a little-known chapter in American activism, and a rare insider experience of a for-profit immigrant detention center, an institution that is rapidly expanding across the American landscape.
“The Infiltrators represents everything LALIFF aspires to be - a film for our U.S. community by our U.S. community with international ramifications,” said LALIFF co-founder Edward James Olmos. “The film was made by a Latinx duo and focuses on the real-life story of undocumented youth that sacrificed everything to help others like them being held inside migrant detention centers. Nothing can be more timely.”
The festival program is comprised of 15 feature films including three World Premieres, with ten of the features helmed by women. In addition to The Infiltrators, the section includes Building the American Dream (directed by Chelsea Hernandez), Carlos Almaraz: Playing with Fire (directed by Elsa Flores Almaraz and Richard J. Montoya), Councilwoman (directed by Margo Guernsey), De Lo Mio (directed by Diana Peralta), Divine Love (directed by Gabriel Mascaro), the World Premiere of I’ll See You Around (directed by Daniel Fermin Pfeffer), Initials S. G. (directed by Rania Attieh and Daniel Garcia), Midnight Family (directed by Luke Lorentzen), Pahokee (directed by Ivete Lucas and Patrick Bresnan), Premature (directed by Rashaad Ernesto Green), the World Premiere of Raúl Julia: The World’s a Stage (directed by Ben DeJesus), Sick Sick Sick (directed by Alice Furtado), the World Premiere of Siqueiros: Walls of Passion (directed by Lorena Manriquez) and The Sharks (directed by Los Tiburones and Lucia Garibaldi).
“This year’s program redefines what a Latinx story is,” said Dilcia Barrera, Director of Programming. “The diversity in voice, aesthetic and vision propels our narratives beyond clichés and conventions. I am certain that the next generation of storytellers can be found within this group of talented artists.”
For the full press release, click here. bit.ly/2019laliffprogram
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