San Diego Latino Film Fest packs 147 films into 5-day showcase

The San Diego Latino Film Festival (SDLFF) will showcase 147 films from around the globe over the next five days.

SDLFF turns 33 this year, and that milestone has founder Ethan Van Thillo reflecting on its history.

"We started as a small student Chicano film festival here in San Diego," Van Thillo recalled. "And now, to be celebrating 2026 with a tribute to Luis Valdez — who's known as the father of Chicano cinema and Chicano theater — is a really wonderful celebration. I'm really excited about it. Luis Valdez is someone who's made films like 'La Bamba' and 'Zoot Suit' (both screening at the festival). He's just a legend in the community, a legend for Chicano cinema in general. So to be able to have him here in person, to show that movie in a movie theater with everyone around, to be able to do a Q&A with him, is really an honor."

Insignia Films

Valdez will be at the Saturday screening of "American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez," a documentary about him. That screening is already sold out, but there will be an additional screening of the documentary on Sunday without Valdez at Southwestern College.

For the opening night feature tonight, SDLFF is showing "Street Smart: Lessons from a TV Icon," a documentary about Maria from "Sesame Street."

"We all grew up with her," Van Thillo noted. "And to think about someone like that — she was a pioneer and the first Latina woman on kind of mainstream TV that we saw every morning as kids and families. And so it's really important that we document and celebrate a wonderful woman, and the filmmaker will be here for the film."

Compressed schedule

The high cost of theater rentals has forced the festival to cut back on its usual 11-day schedule.

"So we took it down to 5 days last year, and we actually found out that we had the same amount of people come and the same wonderful energy," Van Thillo said. "That's what I love about the film festival, and that's why we have over 147 films. I want people just to come and just experience different things, and you feel that energy in the theater."

But the shorter schedule means attendees face fewer opportunities to catch a movie, with more films overlapping in multiple venues.

"Yeah, we're forcing people to make choices," Van Thillo said. "But then also maybe see a film at 2 p.m. on a Friday, and then also late-night films, too. Every kind of 90 minutes, there's going to be a new film that starts, so you can just come on in and check out whatever film's starting at that time. Take 'Soy Frankelda,' Mexico's first stop-motion animation film. It's an incredible animated film with music and singing. The filmmakers will be here. It was produced out of Guadalajara. Guillermo d…Toro helped produce it."

The animation is truly stunning and wildly inventive.

Un Mundo Extraño

Van Thillo also recommended "this dystopian film from Uruguay called 'Un Futuro Brillante,' which is just incredible to see."

That film is part of my favorite sidebar at the festival, Un Mundo Extraño, which showcases genre shorts and features that explore strange worlds. The sidebar was created by Horrible Imaginings Film Festival founder Miguel Rodriguez and is now curated by Luis Martinez. He sees the sidebar as a complement to the festival's films that are more grounded in real-world themes.

"Alongside those issues, we want to showcase that Latinos have a great love of genre films," Martinez said. "Un Mundo Extraño is a counterbalance to the more serious fare by showcasing how Latinos deal with their trauma, with their past, with their history through horror, through sci-fi, through telling interesting stories."

Catherina Cojulun

Escondido filmmaker Catherina Cojulun will screen her short "New Human," a cautionary sci-fi tale about a woman about to leave her clone on a dying planet.

"She's teaching her clone how to be human," Cojulun said. "And she's basically grappling with this idea that her clone might be more human than she is. So it's about sacrifice and what do humans do to atone for their sins from destroying the world."

Un Mundo Extraño often highlights work that presents primarily as genre filmmaking and only incidentally as Latino or Latinx.

"I'm just so proud that this film specifically — that's not necessarily the most outwardly Latino film — can be in this festival and be an expansion of what we can create," Cojulun said. "Sometimes I just want to see myself on the screen, and I want to be in a sci-fi or a fantasy or 'Lord of the Rings.' So I just want to make films that are out of the box of what so many people, I feel like, put us in."

Un Mundo Extraño highlights films that think outside the box and often push you out of your comfort zone, as "Santa Zeta" does. This genre-jumping feature from Spain is my favorite of the festival — vibrant and bold, with fierce energy and a willingness to go someplace dark.

Comedy showcase

In addition to horror and sci-fi, Martinez also programs comedy.

"¡Hay que Reírse! is my baby," Martinez said with pride. "It's interesting to see where people are finding comedy these days and how people are dealing with their pain and their situations in a comedic way. Latinos, if nothing, are resilient."

For Van Thillo, it is important to have a safe place to celebrate Latino culture and the diversity of Latino cinema.

"We need to teach future generations the joy and the power of seeing movies together," Van Thillo said. "We need to teach future generations about the history of the Chicano/Latino community. We have a federal government that's working day after day to erase history, to take it away from schools, to take it away from libraries, to destroy public spaces like movie theaters. So we need to really celebrate and bring people together to document and to preserve the history of the Chicano community, Latino community, and Latino film and art.

So clear your calendar for the next five days and immerse yourself in the San Diego Latino Film Festival. As someone who has attended all 32 previous years, I am so grateful we have this amazing showcase.