This year’s Tribeca Film Festival (June 4–15) brings a powerful lineup of U.S. Latino and Latin American films spanning fiction, documentary, and music. From Indigenous resistance in the Brazilian Amazon in Yanuni (Closing Night Gala), to Puerto Rican class tensions in Esta Isla, to poetic Chilean and Mexican coming-of-age tales (Cuerpo Celeste, Twelve Moons), these stories pulse with political urgency and emotional depth. Sci-fi meets social commentary in Uruguay’s A Bright Future and the gritty redemption drama Kites set in Rio’s favelas. U.S. Latino directors spotlight untold stories—from racetrack laborers in Backside, to language preservation in Runa Simi, to Kalief Browder’s legacy in For Venida, for Kalief. Music takes center stage too, with intimate portraits of Depeche Mode, Becky G, and competitive a cappella in Just Sing. Tribeca 2025 shows Latino cinema in all its complexity: bold, personal, and boundary-pushing.

The Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival (LALIFF), taking place May 28 – June 1, 2025, is a vibrant celebration of Latino stories told through film, television, animation, and music. Now an Academy Award® Qualifying Festival for Best U.S. Latino Live Action and Animated Shorts, LALIFF continues to elevate diverse voices on a global stage. This year, the festival debuts LALIFF Eastside, a new spotlight on L.A.-based filmmakers sharing powerful, crowd-pleasing stories. With the LALIFF Industry Forum offering networking and career-building opportunities, and the LALIFF Film Market connecting U.S. Latino films with buyers and distributors, this is more than a festival—it’s a launchpad for talent and a must-attend event for film lovers.

The 2025 festival will present 21 feature films from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, France, Greece, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Portugal, Spain, the United States, and Venezuela. These films are part of the main feature lineup, in addition to the Opening and Closing Night selections. Among them are four world premieres, including Brownsville Bred and Papa Melissa, both developed through the Works in Progress finishing fund. 

The New York-based festival ended in May but a special edition is headed to Elizabeth, New Jersey at the Ritz Theater. Stay tuned for more details at colfilmny.com

This year’s Tribeca Film Festival features a handful or American Latino and Latin American movies and series.

• Boca Chica by Gabriella A. Moses from the Dominican Republic

• A Strange Path (Estranho Caminho) by Guto Parente from Brazil

• Richelieu by Pier-Philippe Chevigny is a Guatemalan-Canadian-French co-production

• De La Calle is a docuseries from Nick Barili

This year’s festival includes the option to stream films from home June 19 - July 2.

The Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival (LALIFF) is a premiere international event dedicated to showcasing the entirety of human experience from the Latino perspective, whether through film, television, digital, music, art, or any other vehicle, regardless of platform.

Two Chileans films playing at San Diego’s Digital Gym through June 8.

Chile ’76

Set during the early days of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, Chile ‘76 builds from quiet character study to gripping suspense thriller as it explores one woman’s precarious flirtation with political engagement. 

Director: Manuela Martelli

Run Time: 95 min.

Language: Spanish w/ English subtitles

Starring: Alejandro Goic, Aline Küppenheim, Antonia Zegers, Hugo Medina, Nicolás Sepúlveda

The Cow Who Sang a Song into the Future

A choir of creatures introduces a world delicately constructed by fantasy, mystery, and magical realism in Francisca Alegría’s poignant and stunning debut feature. 

Director: Francisca Alegría

Run Time: 99 min.

Language: Spanish

Starring: Alfredo Castro, Leonor Varela, Luis Dubó, Marcial Tagle, Mía Maestro

The nation's longest-running Latino film festival returns for its 41st edition, called Frontera In Focus. It will present local and international films, including the Femme Frontera and Texas Filmmakers Showcases.

San Antonio: July 11 - 14. Full details here.

Hola Mexico will bring contemporary Mexican cinema to Los Angeles for the 11th year this spring.

Los Angeles: May 31 - June 8. Full details here.

The Philadelphia Latino Film Festival (PHLAFF) was established in 2012 and has become the Greater Philadelphia region’s only festival showcasing the extraordinary and innovative work of emerging and established Latin American and Latino filmmakers. Each year, the Festival includes screenings of ground-breaking works from all genres. Festival programs attract a diverse audience, developing a new space in the Philadelphia region where filmmakers, actors, and producers can meet with other artists, engage with audiences and present and discuss innovative work.

Philadelphia: May 30 - June 2. Full details here.

The Museum of Fine Arts Houston presents the 14th edition of its Latin Wave festival, featuring contemporary cinema from across Latin America.

Houston: May 2- 5. Full details here.

The 22nd Annual Cine Las Americas International Film Festival presents world-class narrative and documentary feature and short films and videos, as well as experimental, animation, and music video selections, in competitive and non-competitive sections.

The festival showcases contemporary films and videos from Latin America (North, Central, South America, and the Caribbean) and the Iberian Peninsula. Films and videos made by or about Latinxs in the U.S. and the rest of the world, as well as films and videos by or about Indigenous groups of the Americas are also invited to participate.

Austin, TX: May 1 - 5. Full details here.

HFFNY celebrates its 20th year with a selection of Latino films from the U.S. and abroad, with a special focus on Cuba.

New York: April 9 - 16. Full details here.

One of the nation’s largest and most prestigious Latino film festivals celebrates its 35th birthday in 2019! The Festival promotes Latino culture in the United States by presenting the best and most recent films from Latin America, Spain, Portugal, and the United States. The Festival is non-competitive. However, the most popular feature narrative, documentary and short are given the Audience Choice Award.

Chicago: March 28 - April 11. More info here.

The Houston Latino Film Festival will be presented on March 28th - 31st, 2019 at Talento Bilingue de Houston and The MATCH. Join us for a weekend to celebrate and enjoy compelling films from the brightest and emerging filmmakers from the U.S., Latin America, Spain and Portugal.

Houston: March 28 - 31. More info here.

Always boasting a broad selection of Latin American films, the Miami Film Fest returns for its 36th edition this March.

Miami: March 1 - 10. Full lineup and details here.

In 1970s Colombia, a narco-trafficking era known as “la Bonanza Marimbera” pulls an indigenous Wayuu family into the fray as they enter the booming business of selling marijuana to Americans. Led by matriarch Ursula Pushaina, the “Birds of Passage”—drug runners—face the constant risk of violence and incarceration from the outsiders in Northern Colombia. The cultural differences between the native population and the newcomers begin a brutal war that threatens to destroy the Wayuu way of life. The strong and impulsive women and men must fight to maintain their livelihoods, culture, and traditions.

To be released February 2019.

Gloria (Gina Rodriguez) finds a power she never knew she had when she is drawn into a dangerous world of cross-border crime. Surviving will require all of her cunning, inventiveness, and strength.

Nationwide: Opens Feb. 1. More information here.

A circle of friends decide to lay bare all their secrets at a dinner, placing their smartphones on the table to share any incoming messages or calls that evening. What starts as a parlor game takes an unexpected, disastrous turn.

Cities nationwide: opens Jan. 11.

A cult film by Hiroshi Teshigahara (WOMAN OF THE DUNES), inspired by the wild, undulating, joyously erupting forms of Barcelona architect Antoni Gaudí.  Teshigahara's eye for texture, shape, and sensual detail meets Gaudí's whimsy in the cinematic exploration of such masterpieces of visionary architecture as the basilica of La Sagrada Família.  The contemporary of artists such as Picasso and Joan Miró, Gaudí drew on Barcelona's medieval Romanesque architecture and ancient Arab culture for his inspiration.  This film reveals the intricacy and hallucinatory richness of his concepts through camerawork alone. Forgoing narration, Teshigahara accompanies his images with a brilliantly eclectic selection of music, ranging from baroque harpsichord to glass orchestra. 

Chicago: Opens Dec. 21 at the Siskel Film Center.

The reckless air of a border town gives extra flavor to a Mexican New Year’s Eve when the night urges Latin American Studies professor Alejandro (Deveze) into the waiting arms of temptation. A missed flight to his home in León strands the cautious middle-aged professor in Tijuana, where the town’s seedy air suggests danger, but the energy in the streets issues an irresistible invitation. After an unexpected encounter with pretty blonde former student Ana (Veta), an American, he joins a party of reveling academics. It’s the first course in an evening laced with comic undertones that will evolve into a tangled odyssey of new sights, new emotions, and a dangerous attraction. Director van Baal (LARGO) makes superb use of Tijuana’s colorful panorama of street action as Alejandro mixes with the vendors, mystery characters, sex workers, and would-be friends who will challenge his status quo.

Chicago: Opens Dec. 14 at Siskel Film Center.

The most personal project to date from Academy Award® winning director and writer Alfonso Cuarón (Children of Men, Y Tu Mamá También), Roma follows Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio), a young domestic worker for a family in Mexico City’s middle-class Roma neighborhood. Delivering an artful love letter to the women who raised him, Cuarón draws on his own childhood to create a vivid and emotional portrait of domestic strife and social hierarchy amidst Mexico’s political turmoil of the 1970s.

Worldwide: Releases in December. Check the website for details.

In an empty loft an unnamed young couple—a sculptor and a dancer—stick orange-colored tape to the floor to demarcate two identically sized areas: one space is to be her dance studio and the other his sculpture workshop. An open plan kitchen and a mattress turn the place into a home and we observe them engage in a sexual relationship, thereby setting the stage for a low-key psychosexual drama centered around the couple's erotic, artistic, and everyday rituals. Afterwards, they always retreat behind their dividing lines as a means to inspire their creativity. Before long, he begins to use her space for his large sculptures, and she uses them for her choreography. This interplay between intimacy and rivalry is designed to empower their mutual goal of constantly exploring themselves anew. However, the man begins to experience a growing desire to have a child with her, as they slowly lose their capacity of distinguishing between their artistic projects, their past and their romantic relationship. Filmmaker Júlia Murat playfully explores their yearning to belong, as they begin to challenge both their artistic identities as well as their identity as a couple.

Chicago: Opens Nov. 30 at Facets.