The Chicago Latino Film Festival is one of the best festivals around, not just for its impressively extensive programming, but for the sense of discovery it affords. Each year I come away treasuring new films and new directors that I hadn’t previously known. This can happen at most festivals, but CLFF is one that consistently expands my horizons with movies that, were it not for the organization’s mission, I might not otherwise hear about.
Not available for preview but noteworthy is Brazailian writer-director Gabriel Mascaro’s Divine Love, the follow-up to his 2015 breakout Neon Bull. Another feature has decidedly local appeal: Cuaco, written and directed by Pilsen theater collective Colectivo El Pozo. The festival description says the film, about a Mexican immigrant who attempts to return home via the same route by which he came, includes their full 2010 production of Mexican playwright Raúl Dorantes’s On the Way to Now. I’m also intrigued by the concept of Zachary Cotler and Magdalena Zyzak’s The Wall of Mexico, in which a wealthy Mexican-American family attempts to keep out white locals who want to steal their magical well water. Likewise, Dominican writer-director José María Cabral’s The Projectionist, about a projectionist who becomes obsessed with finding a woman who appears only in his discarded 16mm footage, entices my cinephilic sensibilities.
