Interview:
Giselle De La Rosa,
Cine Las Americas International Film Festival
Associate Festival Director & Shorts Programmer,
Christian Nelson,
co-director,
Emergente Youth International Film Festival,
Cine Las Americas International Film Festival 2025
Big changes are coming to this year’s Cine Las Americas International Film Festival, which kicks off today and runs May 14-18 at the AFS Cinema and Austin PBS. Dedicated to bringing films to Austin made by and/or about Latinos or Indigenous peoples of the Americas, the festival will host its first film conference on May 16 and 17 at the City of Austin PDC Center. The conference will include a keynote conversation by Austin-based Spy Kids producer and Troublemaker Studios co-founder Elizabeth Avellán, a filmmakers roundtable featuring Austin-based directors David Blue Garcia and Julio Quintana, and panels devoted to makeup artists, non-traditional pathways in filmmaking, new technologies in storytelling, and U.S., Latin American, and Spanish co-productions. In addition, the festival will present the inaugural Emergente Youth International Film Festival, a full day devoted to films by filmmakers under the age of 19 on May 24 at the Eastside Cinema at the Millennium Youth Entertainment Complex. The Cine Las Americas International Film Festival, which will feature 55 features and shorts from 23 countries, opens its film program May 14 with the music documentary Take It Away and closes May 18 with the LGBQT+ comedy fantasy Rains Over Babel. Narrative features comprises of Before the Body, Beloved Tropic, Broken Borders, The Dog Thief, Fine Young Men, Glimmers, Linda, Mad Bills to Pay, Queens, The Star I Lost, and Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed. Documentary features comprises of Balomania, Cosmographies, Desert Angel, Free Leon Peltier, Karuara, People of the River, La Falla, and The Most Beautiful Deaths in the World. The festival also will include the Amnesty International Shorts Showcase on May 15. The “Hecho en Tejas Showcase,” coupling the El Paso-focused documentary Duranguito with Austin- and Texas-made shorts, will be held 6 p.m. May 17 at Austin PBS.
Note: The interview was conducted before the National Endowment for the Arts terminated its $10,000 grant to the Cine Las Americas International Film Festival. Aired: May 14, 2025. Web sites: https://cinelasamericas.org/ https://cinelasamericas.org/emergente/2025-festival/ https://www.facebook.com/cinelasamericasaustin/ |
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