Guillermo del Toro’s ‘Shape of Water’ + Must-See Latino Movies Head to Los Angeles for AFI Fest

It’s officially awards season. From here on out, you won’t be able to find a gala or a film festival that doesn’t want to boast that its movie picks will be amply rewarded by critics and guilds alike. At the heart of it all is this year’s AFI Fest in Hollywood’s own backyard. Gathering a slew of glittering screenings of prestige films featuring some choice A-listers (including Michelle Williams, Christian Bale, Mary J. Blige, and James Franco, among others) opens this year with Netflix’s southern tale of race acrimony in 1940s Mississippi, Mudbound, and closes with Ridley Scott’s All the Money in the World, about the 1973 kidnapping of 16-year-old John Paul Getty III.

As always, you want to look beyond the flashy galas to find a wealth of amazing Latino projects that should remind Angelenos (and Oscar voters, one hopes) of the amazing work being produced all around the continent. So, in addition to urging you to catch Juan Ibáñez‘s classic 1967 flick Los caifanes (shown as part of the fest’s Cinema Legacy program), we wanted to bring the following 11 films to your attention. From werewolf horror films and punk band breakup shorts to Sebastían Lelio’s revelatory follow-up to Gloria and Del Toro’s awards-bound Cold War fantasy fable, here’s everything Latino playing at the Los Angeles festival this year.

AFI Fest runs November 9 – 16, 2017.