10 Most Anticipated Latine Films Premiering at Tribeca Film Festival 2026

Following the death of his beloved grandfather, Javi (Marcel Ruiz) returns home to his native Puerto Rico for the funeral. Upon arrival, he reunites with old family and friends but discovers something new along the way: Luife (Paolo Schoene) and Kiki (Kiki Montilla), two social misfits who run through the island like they own it. A burgeoning love triangle begins as the trio go on a run of adventures that would make even the greatest influencers jealous. But the majesty of Puerto Rico’s lush trees and vibrant sky also makes way for challenges to Javi’s own notions of love, friendship and loss. 

Over the course of a single night in New York City, a collection of migrants, sex workers, dreamers and survivors move through the city’s digital underbelly, all searching for connection in a world that keeps them at its margins. From lonely video game server rooms to lip-filler beauty parlors, these non-actor subjects hustle and hope their way through an urban landscape that is at once indifferent and electric. Anchored by a dialed-in original soundtrack of internet-fried underground NYC music from BBY Goyard, Harto Falión, and Cooper B. Handy and spiritual jazz from Nate Mercereau and Carlos Niño, the film pulses with a rhythm that is unmistakably, defiantly New York.

Set against one of the most volatile flashpoints of the Cold War, Killing Castro unfolds in 1960 New York, where a convergence of forces — including the CIA, FBI and the Mafia — begins to close in on Cuban leader Fidel Castro following his arrival at the United Nations. Featuring Al Pacino as a CIA operative orchestrating a covert plan to eliminate Castro, the film traces a city drawn into a tightening web of political tension and surveillance. When Castro (Diego Boneta) unexpectedly relocates to Harlem’s Hotel Theresa at the invitation of Malcolm X (Kendrick Sampson), the pressure electrifies the global stage. A young translator (Xolo Maridueña), finds himself caught between duty and proximity, his growing curiosity complicating the boundaries between surveillance and trust, while a hotel worker (KiKi Layne) becomes an unwilling participant in a widening political web. 

In Fernanda Tovar’s feature debut, she takes a serious and sympathetic look at the challenges faced by modern youth. Teenage girls La Maestra (Rocío Guzmán) and Paula (Darana Álvarez) are the best of friends and rank at the top of the school swim-team. Everything seems on track for the two to take the team trip to Brazil, until one night when they go to a party and something happens to Paula. La Maestra is torn between seeking vengeance for her friend as she believes is right, or supporting Paula’s wishes to keep the situation quiet and pretending it never happened.

Chile, 1989. Udo, an American wargaming champion, arrives at a sunny beach resort for a peaceful vacation with his girlfriend. When another tourist mysteriously disappears at sea, Udo decides not to search for his missing friend but to instead invite a mysterious local to play his wargame of choice — a tabletop game where players simulate the European theater of World War II. It’s a choice that begins to erode the boundary between game and reality, transforming the sunny beach into something far more dangerous — a reflection of Udo’s own obsession with strategy and control, and his inability to conceive of violence as anything other than imaginary and theoretical. 

In the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, funk music reigns supreme. And for Sabrina (Duda Santos), becoming the queen of “kinky funk” (or “putería,” as it’s called in Brazil) isn’t a dream. It’s an inevitability. Young, smart and determined, with undeniable skills on the mic and a mouth that’s even filthier than those of her male counterparts, Sabrina has what it takes to succeed in this colorful world of hard beats and unbridled sexuality, but she’ll have to crash the gates of polite society to get there. Will she forget where she came from in the process? 

Traveling on foot, Ruben (a commanding Stevenson Jean) returns to Haiti to reconnect with his estranged father. When a persistent street kid (a charismatic Blangue Machiny) starts following him, he makes a deal with the boy: help Ruben find a shortcut, keep some distance, and the boy can stay. Shot en cachet in Cap-Haïtien in 2023, Elisee Junior St. Preux’s debut feature is both a melancholic and refreshing portrayal of “The Pearl of the Antilles,” as well as a phenomenal example of economical narrative filmmaking in the Global South. The production is a collaboration between students and artists with a majority local crew. 

What is the cost of the American Dream? Filmmaker Eddie Sanchez sets out to better understand his parents, Lalo and Beby, in this astonishing debut feature documentary, providing a unique, complex and emotionally resonant visual answer to that question. Expertly merging original interviews with the two as they discuss their courtship, their journey to the United States and what their lives were like once they arrived, including the VHS home movies Lalo and Beby once sent over the border as a means of “visiting” the family members they couldn’t physically be with, Mexicanamerican is a decade-spanning collage exploring the cultural and emotional cost of migration.  

Thirty-eight years after his death, Jean-Michel Basquiat is everywhere. From T-shirts and watches to the most prestigious museums in the world, the artist’s street art-inspired style has never been so visible. Ironically, however, the more Basquiat’s popularity and influence grow, the easier it is to lose sight of the person behind the paintings. To correct this, Quinn Whitney Wilson and Viridiana Lieberman’s new documentary Jean-Michel goes back to the source for an intimate glimpse into the private life of one of the 20th century’s most iconic artists through the eyes of two of the people who knew him best: His sisters Lisane and Jeanine Basquait. 

When night falls in the Puerto Rican countryside, a group of women enter an open field, holding candles in their hands, as masked white-robed figures dance hypnotically in the darkness — a woman whispers, “You’ll set your stories free. Fear will cease to exist.”

What seems like a hallucinatory fever dream is actually part of an overarching creative and filmic exercise run by a multi-generational family of outspoken Puerto Rican women. The Villanueva women convene to “air out” personal memories about their generational trauma and cycles of abuse by the men in their lives — all while these tumultuous recollections take the form of fantastical filmic sequences that the women perform and enact, in a therapeutic fashion. Grandmother Idaliz Villanueva describes the first time she experienced physical abuse at the hands of her husband, a moment of shock to her. As Idaliz’s honest testimonies unfold, we see the Villanueva women inhabit warrior-like personas while the men are represented as gas mask-wearing invasive marauders, intruding on the enveloping natural landscape that the women reside in.