15 Latino Movies You Probably Didn’t See in 2019 But Should
Art by Alan Lopez
When a year begins with the thundering success of a movie like Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma at the Oscars, it’s fair to fear that the rest of the year won’t measure up. And while it’s true that the Academy Award-winning black-and-white feature from one of Mexico’s most renowned auteurs may not be matched when it comes to the 2020 Oscars, there’s no denying that US Latino and Latin American cinema had yet another banner year in 2019. No sooner had Cuarón’s Netflix release barreled into the Oscar race when Sundance unveiled a number of projects that, close to 11 months later, continue to electrify audiences and critics alike. From a Colombian Lord of the Flies that tackled guerrilla fighters to an ode to Mexican punk in the ’80s (co-starring Roma‘s Marina de Tavira) and a powerful chronicle of contemporary Brazilian politics, Sundance set the tone for what’s been a stellar year.
One need only look at the list of winners from the most well-known festivals from around the world: Brazil took home the Un Certain Regard Award (Karim Aïnouz’s The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão) and the Jury Prize (Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles’s Bacurau) at Cannes while Argentina was cited at Berlin with the Teddy Award for Santiago Loza’s Brief Story from the Green Planet. But it was at Sundance where one of the buzziest and timeliest projects that dominated the film festival circuit first emerged: Cristina Ibarra and Alex Rivera’s The Infiltrators walked away with both the Audience Award and the NEXT Innovator Award, cementing this docu-fiction set at a detention center that a group of young undocumented activists infiltrate in order to reveal its shadowy practices.
And while such high-stakes political motivations are more often found in independent films, big-budget tentpole flicks this year couldn’t escape them, especially as old franchises aimed to find new ways of reaching modern audiences by including Latinx characters and storylines. That was definitely the case both for the latest Terminator sequel (Dark Fate, featuring Austin-born Gabriel Luna as the first Latino Terminator) and the newest Rambo (Last Blood, which sent the famed war vet to the border). Neither lit the box office on fire but at least the former — much like Rian Johnson’s Knives Out and the big-screen live-action adaptation of Dora the Explorer — let fearless Latinas be front and center.
Which is all to say, whether you were catching movies at the multiplex, at your local film festival or on that most famous of streaming services, you were bound to see some of the most exciting work coming out of Latin America and being produced by U.S. Latinos. And so, in the spirit of “Best Of” lists that clutter your feeds at this time of year, find our selection of movies you should have caught or should seek out (as some are still making their way to theaters). Check out the full list below, which includes, where they’re available and information on where to catch these cinema gems. – Manuel Betancourt
Editor’s Note: The process behind selecting these films was complicated and akin to a hotly contested election in Latin America including backroom deals and occasional bribery. Eventually, we agreed on a totally unfair system of rating the movies we liked that played in U.S. theaters or prestigious film festivals throughout the world and may have won some awards. We chose to include movies directed by US-born Latinos, Latin Americans, and by non-Latinos but on Latino subjects.