They lift your spirits, prompt you to think, make you feel grateful and inspire you to do more. They connect you to our community, shining a spotlight on what's good about our city. They're stories that are Uniquely Milwaukee.
We're in the heart of the Milwaukee Film Festival, and there's one member of our Radio Milwaukee team who chose some of the movies you'll see this year.
In addition to being an 88Nine DJ and co-host of La Alternativa, Paula Lovo is the new programmer for Cine Sin Fronteras, created 10 years ago to showcase the Latin diaspora. Paula, an artist and documentarian herself, is leading that mission for Milwaukee Film and talked with me about the Cine Sin Fronteras selections for this year's festival.
Cine Sin Fronteras schedule
American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez
April 27-28
Oriental Theatre
This Sundance Film Festival Audience Award winner features interviews with legends like Edward James Olmos and Lou Diamond Phillips, who recognize the resounding legacy of Luis Valdez. From his work creating theater shows for migrant food workers to studio films like La Bamba and Zoot Suit, Valdez’s influential work continues to reflect the struggles and triumphs of the Mexican-American community.
Cine Sin Fronteras Shorts
April 24 | 7:15 p.m.
Downer Theatre
From documentaries to animation, the four films in this program explore physicality, grief, reflection, and transformation. Guaranteed to take you on a journey of emotions and experiences, these films bring us into the realities of a beloved Luchador, body dysmorphia, unexpected surprises, and unpacking loss.
El Canto De Las Manos (Song of the Hands)
April 27 | 9:30 p.m.
Oriental Theatre
Renowned conductor Gustavo Dudamel partners with Coro de Manos Blancas, a choir of deaf performers in Venezuela, to stage Beethoven’s opera Fidelio. As the choir prepares for their innovative performance, the film follows them through auditions, rehearsals and personal stories of resilience in the face of anti-deaf discrimination.
Jaripeo
April 26 | 2 p.m.
Oriental Theatre
In a hypermasculine terrain, one artist takes audiences to the queer communities that embrace jaripeos, a Mexican style of rodeo. Through co-director Efraín Mojica's narrations, this poetic and personal debut documentary unpacks what it means to be queer in Michoacán’s jaripeo spaces and asks what lies beneath the performance of machismo.
La Hija Cóndor (The Condor Daughter)
April 26, 30
Downer Theatre
In this enthralling story of tradition, ambition and carving your own destiny, Clara and her adoptive mother Ana are midwives to a remote indigenous community in the Bolivian Andes. Clara dreams of becoming a singer but remains bound to the confines of her community and duties. Tempted by outside forces, she runs off to the city in pursuit of her aspirations, unwittingly leaving a dark void in her wake.
Mad Bills to Pay (or Destiny, dile que no soy malo)
April 24, 27
Oriental and Downer Theatres
A chronicle of young Rico's summer of selling "Nuttys" on the NYC boardwalk, reckoning with becoming a parent alongside his teenage girlfriend and ideas of what adulthood should look like. Writer-director Joel Alfonso Vargas turns the Bronx into a living, breathing backdrop for a story about young love and the fragile space between boyhood and adulthood.
The Blue Trail (O último azul)
April 27 | 4:30 p.m.
Oriental Theatre
To maximize economic productivity, the government orders the elderly to relocate to distant housing colonies. Tereza, 77, refuses and instead embarks on a journey through the Amazon that will change her destiny forever. Winner of the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival, the latest from director Gabriel Mascaro (Divine Love, MFF2019) is an inspiring reminder that it’s never too late to take flight.
Vainilla (Vanilla)
April 28-29
Downer Theatre
Weaving in and out of rooms, one family of seven bold women find their own way out of the looming inevitability of home foreclosure. Through the lens of 8-year-old Roberta, we see their relationship in the most dynamic and intimate of ways. Set in 1980s Mexico, this directorial debut explores the complexities of multi-generational relationships in a household with diverse feminine influences.
