A Spanish-language film festival is braving the pandemic to move into its first decade online. To do it, it’s shifting the lens on Latinx filmmakers, storytellers, and documentarians who are all working to speak truth to power.
That’s the story for this year’s Latino & Iberian Film Festival at Yale (LIFFY), a weeklong event that begins Monday Nov. 9 with short student films and an evening feature from Dominican director Bladimir Abud. The all-virtual program runs through Nov. 15 with online panel discussions and roundtables in both English and Spanish. This year’s theme is “bringing diversity, truth, and justice into focus,” a riff of Yale’s motto of “lux et veritas” (light and truth) that is also inspired by the current administration. The year is written as 20/20 to suggest perfect vision.
“The New Haven community expects our festival every year,” said Margherita Tortora, who has organized the festival since 2010, in a recent interview over Zoom. “There’s a great expectation. Also, I think it’s not fair to the filmmakers to not have a festival. Many of these films are experimental. They’re all independent. And they really don’t get to show these films in many venues.”