Join the Center for Latin American Studies, Columbus State Community College, and the City University of New York for the Autumn 2025 Latin American Film Festival.

Films will be screened on campus at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesdays (location TBA). Online streaming is also available (registration required). More information about registration will be posted to this page once it's made available.

Bacurau (Brazil, 2019) - September 10: Bacurau, a small village in the Brazilian sertão, mourns the loss of its matriarch, Carmelita, who lived to be 94. Days later, its inhabitants (among them Sônia Braga) notice that their village has literally vanished from online maps and a UFO-shaped drone is seen flying overhead. There are forces that want to expel them from their homes, and soon, in a genre-bending twist, a band of armed mercenaries led by Udo Kier arrive in town picking off the inhabitants one by one. A fierce confrontation takes place when the townspeople turn the tables on the villainous outsiders, banding together by any means necessary to protect and maintain their remote community. The mercenaries just may have met their match in the fed-up, resourceful denizens of little Bacurau.

Carajita (Argentina, Dominican Republic, 2021) -  September 17th: Sarah, the pampered daughter of a corrupt oligarch whose family recently relocated to Las Terrenas, thinks of her Black Dominican nanny, Yarisa, as “part of the family.” The two have a “mother-daughter-like” relationship that transcends their social standing. That illusion is put to the test when Yarisa’s spirited daughter Mallory goes missing, challenging Sarah’s naïve beliefs. Boasting intuitive storytelling and confident direction, Carajita plays like a psychological thriller, deriving oppressive tension from unspoken inequalities and the impunity of privilege.

Babygirl (Dominican Republic, 2023) - September 24th: Set in an upper-class neighborhood of the Dominican Republic, Babygirl is an unsettling portrait of a middle-aged woman, Dominique, and her relations with family, servants, and entourage. With neat precision and calculated detachment, Babygirl  paints a society of strong racial and class differences. Appearances and disappearances are shrouded in mystery; hints at corporate corruption are left unresolved; and nods to Lucrecia Martel’s The Headless Woman (2008) can be felt.

Money Exchange (Argentina, 2022) - October 1st: An extended sequence of newsreel footage about Argentina’s spiraling inflation since 2019 sets the stage for Pablo, who works on Peatonal Florida, Buenos Aires’ economic and tourist epicenter, trying to survive in a precarious and exhausting working world. When he falls in love with Florencia, an architecture student who shows him the city in a different way, he gets involved in the illegal exchange business selling dollars on the black market to improve his standard of living. As an impending currency crisis looms, Pablo seizes the opportunity to strike a blow using the volatility of the dollar value to his advantage. Despite the risks of getting caught by his money-laundering boss, he comes up with an elaborate scheme that could earn them enough money to change his life.

Nobody's Watching (Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, United States, 2018)-  October 8th - What happens when a man who is accustomed to being the centre of attention finds himself becoming invisible? When a life busked from cash in hand jobs trips into freefall? Julia Solomonoff’s delicately textured character study follows Nico, the former star of an Argentinian soap opera, who trades autograph hunters for anonymity and moves from Buenos Aires to New York to take a role in an indie movie. When the project stalls, he chooses to stay believing that his talent will help him find success. Too blond to play Latino and his accent too strong to play anything else, Nico falls through the cracks and must juggle odd jobs to survive. Unwilling to return home and be seen as a failure, Nico manages to stay afloat thanks to his ability to pretend to be something he isn’t.

This event is supported in part by grant funding from the U.S. Department of Education's Title VI NRC funding. The content of this event does not necessarily represent the policy of the U.S. Department of Education, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government.