Festival Finds: The Films We’re Watching This Fall

Early Fall is a choice time of year in New York, when the weather is (supposed to be) mild, and film festivals give audiences a chance to catch movies they might otherwise miss. In this issue, Tiffany Vazquez writes about the ones that caught her attention at a pair of NYC festivals: Paula Cury’s “Scarlet Girls,” a powerful documentary about the consequences of abortion criminalization in the Dominican Republic, and Nicolás Pereda’s “Everything Else Is Noise,” a dry, wonderfully strange comedy about family, music, and everyday frustrations.

For the rest of this week’s lineup, Nicole Costa’s “No Money No Honey” offers an intimate portrait of trans life, memory, and survival, while “Huesera: The Bone Woman” brings pregnancy and motherhood into genuinely unsettling horror territory. Four very different movies, but each gives us something to sit with after the credits roll.

Happy Watching,

— Vanessa

The latest feature documentary from Chilean filmmaker Nicole Costa interweaves home movies with post-pandemic cinematography. While she was working on her previous feature, “The Journey of Monalisa,” Costa met non-binary sex worker Máxima, who had been filming her daily life for over 25 years. These videos make up most of the doc, creating a raw, emotion-filled portrait of three decades of memories that detail queer survival, joy, and community in Buenos Aires, Miami, and New York City.

Playing October 24 in New York as part of NewFest.

Mexican director Michelle Garza Cervera’s 2022 feature debut follows Valeria, a woman who becomes pregnant and starts noticing new quirks, like the sudden habit of cracking her knuckles. Then, she starts seeing terrifying visions of a faceless woman who makes jarring, bone-cracking noises. More disturbing incidents occur that make everyone around Valeria believe she is experiencing psychosis. The film unpacks pregnancy and motherhood through body horror with a fresh lens, making it a timely watch for the season.

Streaming on several digital platforms.

— By Tiffany Vazquez

We are right in the thick of festival season, when many of the year’s most formidable contenders screen in some of the best theaters around the world. But for New York City locals, we’re pretty spoiled, so we don’t have to travel that far. Two important local festivals run in close succession — the New York Latino Film Festival and the New York Film Festival, now in their 25th and 64th years, respectively. While both festivals had excellent movies to choose from, two stood out: Paula Cury’s “Scarlet Girls” ("Niñas Escarlata") and Nicolás Pereda’s “Everything Else Is Noise” ("Lo demás es ruido").

Paula Cury’s feature debut expands on a topic she previously visited in one of her shorts. “Scarlet Girls” explores the lives of Dominican women who have harrowing experiences due to the country’s criminalization of abortion. To protect the identity of the five women sharing their stories, we see visuals of nonactors performing everyday tasks while we hear the women's voices as they detail their experiences. The result is a visually striking and emotionally resonant film that centers women’s lives, legitimizing their truths while living in one of the few countries where abortion is illegal with no exception — even in cases of rape, incest, or dangerous pregnancies where the mother's life is at risk.