POV Spotlight on Latinx and Spanish-language Cinema
September 15th - October 15th is Hispanic Heritage Month. Watch the following films that spotlight unique Latinx and Spanish-language stories. Check out these POV titles and more, streaming on our homepage and by downloading the PBS app.
Fruits of Labor(dir. by Emily Cohen Ibañez) Available broadcast and streaming on 10/4
Ashley, a Mexican-American teenager living in California, dreams of graduating high school and going to college. But when ICE raids threaten her family, Ashley is forced to become the breadwinner, working days in the strawberry fields and nights at a food processing company.
Five Years North(dir. by Zach Ingrasci & Chris Temple) Available broadcast and streaming from America ReFramed 10/5
Five Years North is the story of Luis and Judy. Luis is an undocumented 16-year-old Guatemalan boy who arrives alone in New York City from an ICE detention center with little support and many responsibilities. Luis has journeyed to the U.S. to make money for his family back home, all of whom are relying on him for their very survival. Getting by as a delivery boy and a cook, Luis faces all the obstacles of being an undocumented worker, with the added burdens of his young age: homesickness, mandated participation in the NYC school system and social workers monitoring his every move. Above all, Luis must manage the looming threat of deportation by ICE.
La Casa de Mama Icha (dir. by Oscar Molina) Available broadcast and streaming on 10/18
Decades earlier, Mama Icha moved to the United States to help her daughter with the care of her grandchildren. However, she never lost sight of her hometown of Mompox, spending years sending money to build her dream house there. Now, at the end of her life, Mama Icha boards a plane and flies back to Colombia where she bravely struggles with her loved ones.
Things We Dare Not Do(dir. by Bruno Santamaría) Available broadcast and streaming 10/25
In the small Mexican coastal village of El Roblito, 16-year-old Ñoño lives what seems to be an idyllic existence with his loving family. But he holds a secret. Defying gender norms, Ñoño works up the courage to tell his family he wants to live his life as a woman, a fraught decision in a country shrouded in machismo and transphobia.
Rember Yahuarcani is an Indigenous painter from the White Heron clan of the Uitoto Nation in Peru. He left to pursue a successful career in Lima, but when he finds himself in a creative rut, he returns home to his Amazonian community of Pebas, visiting his father, a painter, and his mother, a sculptor, and discovers why the stories of his ancestors cannot be forgotten.
In the shadow of Silicon Valley, a hidden community thrives despite difficult circumstances. For one resident, eight-year-old Geovany Cesario, impending change is bittersweet.
In the indigenous communities around the town of Juchitán, Mexico, the world is not divided simply into men and women. The local Zapotec people have made room for a third category, which they call “muxes”—men who consider themselves women and live in a socially sanctioned limbo between the two genders.
Outside of El Chapo's Brooklyn trial, his mythology appears in media spectacles, sidewalk conversations and selfies.
The Unafraid(dir. by Anayansi Prado & Heather Courtney)
Banned from attending Georgia’s top five public universities and from paying in-state tuition at other public colleges in the state, DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) students like Alejandro, Silvia, and Aldo unite through their activist work with an immigrants’ rights group. The youth courageously organize, lead protests and rallies and even testify at Senate hearings. President Trump’s 2016 campaign rhetoric simmers in the background of their gripping and vital personal stories, filmed in vérité style over nearly four years.
Created and popularized by largely Puerto Rican, Cuban and African American youths living alongside each other as neighbors and friends in the 1960s, Boogaloo served as an authentic and vibrant cultural expression of a generation using Latin musical hooks with English lyrics. We Like It Like That explores a lesser-known but pivotal moment in 1960’s music history when blues, funk and traditional Caribbean rhythms were fused to define a new generation of urban Latinos.
Major funding for POV is provided by PBS, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Wyncote Foundation, Reva & David Logan Foundation, Open Society Foundations and the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional funding comes from Nancy Blachman and David desJardins, Bertha Foundation, The Hollywood Foreign Press Association's Charitable Trust, Park Foundation, Sage Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, Chris and Nancy Plaut, Abby Pucker, Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee and public television viewers. POV is presented by a consortium of public television stations, including KQED San Francisco, WGBH Boston and THIRTEEN in association with WNET.ORG.
