As we enter Hispanic Heritage Month, (September 15th – October 15th) we honor Hispanic creators and filmmakers through this list of 10 films. Historically, Hispanic Heritage has often been underrepresented and undermined in Hollywood. However, these selected films highlight the rich and unique cultures from countries like Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Spain. This diverse list includes essential viewing from Hispanic auteurs like Pedro Almodóvar and Alfonso Cuarón, as well as documentaries chronicling the history and experiences of Hispanic-Americans. These films will broaden your view of Hispanic culture, not just this month, but year-round.
Birds of Passage
Avian symbolism permeates Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra’s drama about the damaging impact of outside forces on the indigenous peoples of Colombia, telling a Godfather-like saga about the drug trade’s destruction of the traditional culture of the Wayuu, a group that inhabits the arid Guajira Peninsula in the country’s north.
Read our review of Birds of Passage.
Cesar's Last Fast
The focus of Richard Ray Perez's riveting film is labor leader Cesar Chavez's highly publicized 36-day “Fast for Life,” during which he consumed only water. Perez's documentary, which was shown at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, offers a deeply moving study of Chavez's dramatic ordeal, while simultaneously tracing his tumultuous efforts to change federal law and allow the predominantly immigrant farm workers to organize into a union.
Read our review of Cesar's Last Feast.
Chico and Rita
An old-fashioned romance is at the heart of this Oscar-nominated animated tale of long-unrequited love that is told against the backdrop of 20th-century Cuban history. Pianist-composer, Chico, and sultry singer, Rita, meet in Havana during the swinging 1940s and become a couple, both onstage at the Tropicana and back in his flat.
Read our review of Chico and Rita.
Get your copy of the Chico and Rita Blu-ray by clicking here.
A Fantastic Woman
The “other woman” in a man’s life is treated disdainfully by her lover’s family when he suddenly dies. While that might sound like the plot of a 1940s tearjerker, it’s given a modern twist in Sebastián Lelio’s Oscar-winning Chilean film: the protagonist is a transgender woman, who is played triumphantly by trans actress Daniela Vega, in a remarkably subtle, refined performance.
Read our review of A Fantastic Woman.
Get your copy of the A Fantastic Woman Blu-ray DVD by clicking here.
Living Los Sures
Now much gentrified, the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn was one of the poorest parts of New York City, inhabited mostly by Puerto Ricans who called the area “Los Sures” (which translates as “The Souths” or “The Southside”). Los Sures offers an incisive ethnographic study of a place that earlier residents would barely recognize today, although the problems they faced three decades ago will be familiar to people now living in other areas of the Big Apple.
Read our review of Living Los Sures.
Marcos Doesn't Live Here Anymore
Filmmaker David Sutherland’s documentary takes an up close and personal look at the hot-button issue of illegal immigration, presenting an intimate portrait of Cleveland-area wife—and Marine Corps veteran—Elizabeth Perez as she struggles to bring her undocumented Mexican husband Marcos, father of her two children, home after a decade-old arrest record unexpectedly resurfaces and gets him summarily deported. A searing look at a memorably strong-willed female fighting doggedly for her family.
Read our review of Marcos Doesn't Live Here Anymore.
Get your copy of the Marcos Doesn't Live Here Anymore DVD by clicking here.
Pain and Glory
Oscar-nominated as Best International Film, Pain and Glory is Pedro Almodovar’s bittersweet, thinly veiled, semi-autobiographical drama, revolving around a fictional Spanish filmmaker, Salvador Mallo (Antonio Banderas), who contemplates how much fire he still has in his belly. “Without filming, my life is meaningless,” he declares.
Read our review of Pain and Glory.
Get your copy of the Pain and Glory Blu-ray by clicking here.
Roma
Alfonso Cuarón's immersive, black-and-white, semi-autobiographical film is set in 1971 in Mexico City’s Colonia Roma district. The film follows Cleo, an indigenous Mixteco from the southern state of Oaxaca, who works as a live-in maid/nanny for an upper-middle-class family. Sensitively written, insightfully directed and vibrantly photographed by Cuarón, it’s epic, yet intricately detailed in its depiction of loneliness.
Read our review of Roma.
Get your copy of the Roma Blu-ray DVD by clicking here.
Rubén Salazar: Man in the Middle
Filmmaker Phillip Rodriguez's PBS-aired documentary examines Rubén Salazar's quest for both self-identity and justice for his people. The film covers Salazar's still relevant concerns on issues such as immigration, drug enforcement, border security, and coping with living in a time of rapidly changing Hispanic culture in California and the Southwest.
Read our review of Rubén Salazar: Man in the Middle.
Y Tu Mamá También
A coming of age movie with a soul and something insightful to say. Like his characters, writer-director Alfonso Cuarón takes the road less traveled here, touching on issues of faith, fidelity, free expression, and self-discovery, as the wayfaring trio journeys through the rough, parched countryside, testing their evolving states of friendship and more along the way.
Read our review of Y Tu Mamá También.
Get your copy of the Y Tu Mamá También Blu-ray DVD by clicking here.