Ohio State’s Latin American Film Festival returns with new theme and screenings

Ohio State’s Center for Latin American Studies is hosting a Latin American Film Festival with the central theme of “Liberation.” Credit: Aria Garcia | Lantern Reporter

The Latin American Film Festival is offering three remaining movie screenings surrounding its 2024 theme of “Liberation.” 

The annual event — which began Aug. 28 and will conclude Oct. 16 — is hosted by the Center for Latin American Studies, the Department of Spanish and Portugese, Columbus State Community College and City University of New York. The remaining screenings will be held in room 180 of Hagerty Hall on select Tuesdays and Wednesdays, according to the festival’s website. 

The next featured title — director Patricia Ramos’ 2017 film “On the Roof” — is scheduled for 6 p.m. Wednesday. 

Every festival screening, according to the website, is also followed by a Q&A with expert panelists. Panelists for Wednesday’s screening include Laura Podalsky, an Ohio State Spanish and Portuguese professor, as well as Rob Lassche, a Spanish and Portuguese graduate student. 

The festival originally started in spring 2023, Julie Beltran, the center’s outreach coordinator, said. 

Notably, Beltran said the center applied for Pragda’s Spanish Film Club Grant in fall 2024, and ended up securing the funding shortly after. Pragda is an online organization that strives to provide more foreign-film access to educators, according to its website.

“From there, we realized that it was actually a very good thing to have a film-screening option every fall as part of our agenda,” Beltran said. 

According to the festival’s website, the screenings spotlight feature films from various Latin American countries, including Argentina, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Brazil and Paraguay, with English subtitles offered at each screening. 

Some films already screened this year — according to the festival’s website — include “Ni Héroe Ni Traidor,” which was shown Aug. 28 and follows an Argentinian man who dreams of going to Spain to study music, “La Yuma,” which was shown Sept. 4 and follows a Nicaraguan woman trying to become a boxer and “Mariam Miente,” which was shown Sept. 11 and chronicles a young girl’s quinceañera gone wrong. 

Apart from Wednesday’s upcoming screening, there are still two more films to be shown Oct. 1 and 16, according to the festival’s website. One, titled “Alice Junior,” is a coming-out story of a Brazilian transgender woman; the other, called “Guarani,” follows two generations of a Paraguayan family on a road trip. 

Beltran said the festival is just one way the center can educate others on Latin American culture.

“We are constantly looking for ways to foster and promote Latin American culture and any kind of academic and cultural event that can develop around Latin America,” Beltran said. “One of the things we wanted to do is precisely have a film-screening series.” 

Beltran said the center also offers online versions of the screenings for those who are unable to attend in person. 

“Part of the licensing of acquiring the rights to screen them includes the rights to stream them,” Beltran said. “For the people who don’t have a chance to go to Ohio State’s campus for the day of the film screening, they have a chance to access the film for a whole week online.” 

Leila Vieira, the center’s assistant director, said the festival was born out of Mark Hoff’s — the center’s former assistant director — hopes of finding a distinct way to promote Latin American culture to students.

“[Hoff] started with the idea. When he did it last year, the theme was Latin America and the World,” Vieira said. ”It was always films about either a Latin American protagonist going somewhere else in the world — what are the struggles that they’re dealing with — or someone from another part of the world going into Latin America.”

Vieira said when putting together this year’s screening lineup, she asked students from the Ohio State Spanish and Portuguese Club to help. She said students played a crucial role in making the festival happen, and that is why she wanted them to help make these major decisions. 

“For this year, I knew I wanted undergraduates to have a say in which films are shown because it’s for them,” Viera said. 

Vieira said she hopes students will learn something new about Latin American culture through this series.

“My favorite part is when the undergraduates relate to what they see and can think about their own experience based on what they say — when the undergraduates in the audience start sharing about their own interpretations and connections that they’re making with the movie and their own lives,” Vieira said.

For more information on the festival, including how to register to attend the screenings, visit the Center for Latin American Studies website.