A Guide to Everything Latino at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival

American politics and media are aptly satirized in this feature by firebrand comedian Ricky Gervais. A pretentious radio journalist and his ineffectual technician botch an assignment in South America, and decide to fabricate an on-the-scene story while hiding out in a New York City apartment. This scheme spirals out of their control when their escalating story becomes a national headline. The comedy features Latino cast members Benjamin Bratt, America Ferrera, and Raul Castillo.

Madly is an international anthology of short films exploring love in all its permutations. Directed by some of the most vibrant filmmakers working today, the six stories in Madly portray contemporary love in all its glorious, sad, ecstatic, empowering, and erotic manifestations. Dance, Dance, Dance is directed by Chilean filmmaker Sebastian Silva, while the Argentina-set The Love of My Life is helmed by Gael García Bernal.

Her medical options exhausted, an American woman travels to the Amazon in search of a miracle. At a healing center, she finds hope in the form of the psychedelic plant known as ayahuasca. With her perception forever altered, she bonds with a young indigenous shaman who is treating a group of psychonauts seeking transcendence, companionship, and the secrets of life and death. Thanks to the shaman who is losing his eyesight, she learns to confront her susto (the disease of fear.) Set in an actual Ayahuasca retreat in Peru, the movie features real shamans and indigenous non-actors from the Shipibo community. Many aspects of the film are based on co-director Leonor Caraballo’s true experiences who battled breast cancer as the shoot began. Although she dedicated herself to the project until the very end, sadly she died before she could see the film finished.

Ariel is summoned to Buenos Aires by his distant father, who runs a Jewish aid foundation in El Once, the bustling Jewish neighborhood where he spent his youth. Writer-director Daniel Burman (All In) is back with this tender exploration of community, and the intricacies of the father-son relationship.

Allegations of corporate criminality and Wall Street vendettas swirl throughout this riveting financial docu-thriller. Controversial hedge fund titan Bill Ackman is on a crusade to expose global nutritional giant Herbalife as the largest pyramid scheme in history. He argues the company targets working-class Latino communities with a “business opportunity” that is nothing more than a scheme. Meanwhile, Herbalife execs defend their product as a genuine opportunity and accuse Ackman of being an unadorned market manipulator out to bankrupt them in order to make a killing off his billion-dollar short position against the company. Amidst the heated rhetoric on both sides, who has the moral standing?

Nostalgic, sweet, and at moments poignantly funny, Califórnia is a coming-of-age tale about a high school student, Estela, growing up in São Paulo in the 1980s. Estela is doing all she can to get to California to visit her glamorous and cultured uncle. While focused on keeping her grades up, her life is complicated by romance, sex, and social pressures.

Jaime García appears to be the quintessentially machismo mariachi singer, yet beneath his magnetic confidence lies a man struggling to maintain a relationship with his estranged family while living as an HIV-positive man. In Jose Villalobos Romero’s remarkable cinematic debut, he utilizes vivid tableaus and stylized perspective to paint a beautifully unique and emotional portrait of a man divided.

Gerardo Chijona’s newest film opens with a thief breaking into the home of a famous writer, and unknowingly stealing what turns out to be the only manuscript of his upcoming story. In desperate need of money, he submits it to a contest, which will see him competing with the very writer he robbed.

Close to 80,000 Syrian refugees live in the Zaatari Refugee Camp in Jordan. After Spring immerses us in the rhythms of the camp, the role of the aid workers, and the daily lives of two families as they contemplate an uncertain future. Executive produced by Jon Stewart, and co-directed by Latina Ellen Martinez, this is a fascinating journey through the camp’s physical and human landscapes.

Mexican-born Rafael Palacio Illingworth sure nabbed quite the cast for his second feature film following his well-received 2009 film, Macho. Longtime couple Henry (Ben Feldman) and Dianne (Olivia Thirlby) are afraid that if they finally tie the knot it would mean the end of their days as free-spirited urbanites. But a whirlwind night apart involving temptations from a duo of strangers (Analeigh Tipton and Adam Goldberg) will either make them realize why they are together in the first place or finally drive them apart forever.

Fed up with being abused and harassed on the brutal inner-city streets of Washington D.C., a group of gay and trans teens form a gang to fight back. The writer-director behind the Emmy award-winning documentary Latinos in Beisbol teamed up with Toby Oppenheimer for this raw and intimate portrait follows four Check It members as they struggle to find a way out of gang life through an unlikely avenue: fashion.

Deborah S. Esquenazi is here telling the story of Elizabeth Ramirez, Cassandra Rivera, Kristie Mayhugh, and Anna Vasquez—four Latina lesbians who in 1994 were tried and convicted of a heinous assault on two young girls in a court case that was infused with homophobic prejudice and the Satanic Panic sweeping the nation at that time. Southwest of Salem is a fascinating true crime story that puts the trial of the San Antonio Four in context of their ongoing search for exoneration.

Arthur Martinez is a computer repairman and aspiring actor who commissions indie directors Mike Ott and Nathan Silver to film his life. In the directors’ first collaboration, we see them follow Arthur as he goes to work, drives around, and auditions for a love interest (Lindsay Burdge), leading them to question the meaning of the project, and ultimately that of identity and stardom.

Six-year-old Sophie Cruz took the world by storm when she broke through the police barricades in Washington DC to give the Pope a letter. Her letter asked the Pope to convince President Obama and Congress to pass immigration reform. In that moment, Sophie became an Internet sensation. Free Like the Birds is the intimate story her family fighting against the looming threat of deportation. Sophie is at the center of her family’s plight and that of millions of children like her. Through her innocence, her laughter and through her understanding of what it means to be an immigrant and an American, we bear witness to her family striving for the American Dream.

Legal and intimate family dynamics dovetail in Custody. Starring Viola Davis as an embattled family court judge with a fraught marriage of her own; Hayden Panettiere as a recent law-school grad flung into a custody case; and Colombian actress Catalina Sandino Moreno as the single mother at the center of the case who risks losing her two children over an ill-timed argument.

Like many gay men in the 1980s, Miguel moved from Puerto Rico to New York City; he found a career in theater and a rewarding relationship. Yet, on his deathbed he grappled to reconcile his homosexuality with his Catholic upbringing. Now, decades after his death, his niece Cecilia locates Miguel’s estranged lover to understand the truth, and in the process opens up long-dormant family secrets.

With inside access to the players, decision makers, and supporters who were central to the formation of New York City Football Club (including former captain of the USMNT and current director of NYCFC operations Claudio Reyna) and its historic inaugural season, Win! offers a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to build a Major League Soccer team from the ground up, in the country’s most competitive sports market. The team, led by global superstars like David Villa, Frank Lampard and Andrea Pirlo, alongside a growing squad of American veterans and young talent, set out to conquer their owners’ lofty expectations and win the hearts of New Yorkers.

This must-watch doc for Madonna fans features the familiar faces of José Gutierrez and Luis Camacho, the two Latino dancers from New York City who introduced the Queen of Pop to the practice of vogueing and who would later join her in the Blonde Ambition tour. Alongside Kevin, Oliver, Luis, Carlton, Jose, Gabriel and Salim, José and Luis are a diverse, impressionable group of young dancers whose lives were forever changed by Madonna’s iconic blonde ambition tour and its accompanying documentary, Truth or Dare. No longer swept up in the thrill of Madonna’s inarguable power, some found life – away from her influence – emotionally devastating and near impossible to navigate. Strike a Pose movingly revisits the men after years apart and provides us with a chance to learn about the emotional truth behind the glamorous facade.

From the slums of Brazil to center stage at the world’s biggest sporting event, Pelé’s rise to become the youngest-ever World Cup winner, at the age of 17, was nothing short of a miracle. Full of laughs, life lessons, and heart, this inspiring biopic is perfect for introducing a new generation to the greatest soccer player of all time.

When it raised over $800,000 on Kickstarter, The Untitled Bill Nye Documentary broke the fundraising site’s records and instantly became one of the most anticipated upcoming documentaries. Join Mexican-American David Alvarado, his co-director Jason Sussberg, and the titular Science Guy as they preview exclusive scenes from their upcoming doc and discuss their process, collaboration, and fundraising strategy.

El Púgil tells the inspirational story of Angel ‘Tito’ Acosta, a promising, young boxer from Barrio Obrero – one of Puerto Rico’s poorest neighborhoods. Lyrical and cinematic, the doc paints an intimate portrait of Tito, Puerto Rico, and their shared fight to beat the odds.

This football-themed short, edited by Mexica-born Salvador Pérez García, features Alejandro Patiño as Urbina, a detective investigating what’s brought “The Duke” to the hospital.

A lonely boy finds himself trapped in a dark fantasy come alive in the streets of La Paz, Bolivia.

We All We Got captures the poetic language of the streets: police helicopters flying over the city, people talking shit on the street corners, ambulances on the run, and preachers hollering for the violence to stop after another young man is senselessly gunned down in the streets of Chicago.

A mature Eric Blair (George Orwell’s given name) looks back to his younger self with regret; He was shamed into being the public executioner of a rogue work elephant while stationed in The British Foreign Service in Burma. Based on the George Orwell short story of the same name and helmed by Venezuelan-American director Juan Pablo Rothie, Shooting An Elephant tracks the tragic steps of a day long rued, when a man’s innocence was forever lost. Reprimanded by his ineffectual superiors, goaded on by the very Burmese who had grown reliant, yet distrustful of the English uniform, driven to blood lust to by his own false pride, Eric Blair, kills an elephant he did not wish to harm solely to avoid humiliation, and in the process loses his own humanity.

In a half-urbanized community in the Mexican tropics, Santiago and his friends Antonio and Miguel are having a fun afternoon, sharing jokes, pranks, and dreams, as they straddle the boundary between childhood and adult life. The discovery of some charred human remains will draw them sharply back to reality, as a stark reminder of the horrors of drug trafficking.