Back to School, But Make It Latino Cinema

When I was a kid, one of my favorite parts of back-to-school season involved buying new school supplies. I was a bit of a nerd, so nothing beat a crisp unused notebook, some Pilot G2 pens, a pack of Mr. Sketch scented markers, and an afternoon spent organizing everything in my backpack. September came with the promise of a clean slate. New classes, new teachers, new possibilities. Maybe this year I’d finally keep my binder organized and do my homework the night before (instead of rushing to finish it at recess). There’s something about that annual reset, especially the mix of excitement and nerves that comes with figuring out who you’ll be when you walk through those school doors.

That feeling runs through so many coming-of-age movies, including the two Tiffany Vazquez revisits in this week’s featured essay: “Don’t Let Me Drown” and “Mamitas.” Both films follow Latino teenagers stumbling through first love, family pressures, grief, and the uncertainty of what comes next, far from the glossy hallways and neatly packaged teenage angst of the high school movies many of us grew up watching.

Tiffany also has two picks for your watchlist: a Chilean drama where romance, Shakespeare, and filmmaking begin to bleed into one another, and a haunting Puerto Rican coming-of-age story now streaming. So grab your metaphorical backpack and come back to school with us. Just don’t forget your notebook.

Happy Watching,

— Vanessa

Diego Soto’s “La Corazonada” takes place in the Chilean countryside, where Nieves runs an inn with her son and generally leads a quiet life. A visitor comes who reignites her long-gone romantic desires, followed by a filmmaker who casts them both in her adaptation of “The Tempest.” The production begins to affect every aspect of their lives as they start to question their realities, desires, and relationship to art.

Playing on September 30 at Anthology Film Archives in New York.

The critically acclaimed Puerto Rican film by directors Cristian Carretero and Lorraine Jones follows Bebo and Lola, young lovers forced to flee their coastal hometown after a murder threatens their safety. Their trip deeper into the mountains forces them to grow closer to the land, acknowledge their ancestral ties to the place they call home, and trade their individualism for the realization that everyone and everything is connected. The cast includes many newcomers, including the incredible leads Zion Ortiz and Fabiola Victoria Brown as Bebo and Lola, as well as veteran actor Georgina Borri. Winner of last year’s John Cassavetes Award at the Film Independent Spirit Awards, this movie is not one to miss.

Streaming on Kanopy and available to rent on digital platforms.

— By Tiffany Vazquez

Back-to-school season is fully here, which naturally prompts people to revisit movies that center students, academia, and coming of age. The high school movie genre is gargantuan, obviously. There’s everything from “American Graffiti” to “Dazed and Confused,” “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” to "The Breakfast Club," and countless others that have been solidified as the archetypal American High School experience. While those films are classics, they often feel far removed from the high school experiences many Americans have had, mostly because of cultural differences. But the historical independent film wave of the 1990s led to an indie movie boom starting in the late 2000s, when filmmakers from various underrepresented backgrounds finally got a platform and financial support to tell their stories.

Two movies from this era are Cruz Angeles’ “Don’t Let Me Drown” and Nicholas Ozeki’s “Mamitas,” both of which center Latino teenagers navigating relationships with their families and romantic partners while also questioning their futures, and had they come out when I was a teen, they would have had a seismic impact on me.

In “Don’t Let Me Drown," Bushwick teen Lalo (EJ Bonilla) grows up in a Mexican household. He lives with his parents and uncle; all immigrants except for him. His father (Damián Alcázar) was a janitor at the World Trade Center and, in October 2001 (the movie's present), works at Ground Zero helping to clean up the ruins. Undocumented and unprotected, he has no options when his boss doesn’t pay him on time. He comes home covered in cancerous debris, exhausted from the physical and emotional labor. Lalo’s mother (Yareli Arizmendi) sells tamales on Knickerbocker Avenue to try to make rent, and has to borrow money from her brother (Raúl Castillo); money that was intended to be sent back home to their mother in Mexico. The family watches the constant news coverage of the attacks; nothing else is on TV. They see how this has ramped up deportations and anti-immigrant sentiments across the country as nationalism increases, and they internalize their fears.