Reel Latin America(n) Film Festival Brings Stories of Resilience and Belonging to UofL

Fall 2025 LALS Film Festival | Oct. 9 – Nov. 7 | Floyd Theatre, Ekstrom Library 

The Latin American and Latino Studies Program (LALS), housed within the Department of Interdisciplinary and Public Humanities, along with the Classical and Modern Languages Department, proudly present the 32nd edition of the “Reel” Latin America(n) Film Festival. 

For more than three decades, the festival has brought the voices of Spanish and Latin American cinema to Louisville, offering authentic stories of resilience, struggle, and hope. This year’s program expands its scope with the inclusion of Chinas (Spain), deepening the festival’s exploration of migration, identity, and shared cultural challenges within the Spanish-speaking world. 

The 2025 theme—Resilience and Belonging: Voices from the Margins—highlights films that explore identity, justice, and cultural survival. Students and audiences alike are invited to reflect on how communities across the globe transform hardship into strength and belonging. Admission is free and open to the public. 

Q&A with Manolo Medina, Director of the Latin American and Latino Studies Program and professor within the Department of Classical and Modern Languages 

To learn more about the meaning behind this year’s festival, the importance of its legacy, and the value it holds for students, we spoke with Manolo Medina, Director of the Latin American and Latino Studies Program at UofL. 

Q: This year marks the 32nd edition of the Reel Latin America(n) Film Festival. What do you think makes this festival such an important and lasting tradition at UofL and for the Louisville community? 

Medina: For over three decades, the festival has brought together international filmmakers and local audiences in the same conversation. Each screening opens a window into stories that resonate across borders while inviting dialogue on campus and in the city. The series' longevity reflects the energy of students, faculty, and community members who return each year to engage with new voices and films. 

Initially, the festival was a gathering space for the university and the broader Louisville community. In the mid-1990s, before the rise of the internet and social media, Latin America often felt remote and unfamiliar. The festival provided a rare opportunity to glimpse those realities, to learn about places and people that otherwise seemed “foreign.” Over the years, that purpose has expanded and evolved. Today, the screenings invite audiences not only to look outward, but also to recognize connections inward—toward neighbors whose experiences and aspirations mirror their own. The festival thrives as a meeting point where cultural distance gives way to human proximity, and where students and community members together discover how cinema bridges differences and deepens understanding. 

Q: The theme this year is Resilience and Belonging: Voices from the Margins. How do the films in this lineup speak to issues of identity, justice, and cultural survival that students today can connect with? 

Medina: The selected films highlight struggles that feel intimate and collective — questions of family, memory, and continuity that audiences recognize in their own lives. Students connect with these stories because they illustrate the challenges of holding on to one’s sense of self while navigating larger cultural and historical forces. The screenings encourage reflection on how traditions, languages, and personal histories sustain communities through moments of change. 

Audiences also realize that facing struggles forms part of a universal human experience: people everywhere must find ways to endure hardship or to solve it. This recognition underscores a shared humanity, reminding us that regardless of geography or circumstance, we all negotiate resilience and belonging in our own ways. La Suprema offers a vivid example: Laureana’s improbable quest to help her village watch her uncle’s boxing match reveals how humor, persistence, and collective effort can turn scarcity into celebration. In that story, audiences witness resilience as survival and joy, reminding us that even the most remote communities cultivate strength through shared hope and imagination. 

Q: The festival is expanding its scope this year with the inclusion of Chinas from Spain. Why was this addition significant, and what new perspectives does it bring to the festival’s conversation? 

Medina: Including Chinas widens the dialogue to encompass experiences of migration and belonging in a European context. The film follows the lives of girls of Chinese origin growing up in Madrid, and through their perspective, the audience encounters layered questions of heritage, language, and adaptation. This addition deepens the festival’s commitment to presenting cinema that explores how individuals negotiate cultural boundaries in everyday life. 

We also wanted to approach the immigration and diasporic experience from a fresh point of view and present it as a profoundly human process. People have migrated throughout history in search of better lives, and while the contexts change, the experience of exile and displacement continues to demand resilience. Migrants face challenges and go through phases that alter them forever. We wanted to explore that journey in local terms and as a universal process that takes a toll on human beings across time and geography. 

Over the years, we have occasionally included Spanish films to open new conversations, and by moving the dialogue across the Atlantic, we often gain a fresh perspective. Two years ago, for example, we screened a Spanish film that explored the experience of gender transition, situating it in a broader European cultural context. Chinas continues this approach, expanding the festival’s scope while keeping the focus on the shared human struggles and transformations that migration, identity, and belonging entail. 

Q: For students who may be new to the festival or Latin American and Latino Studies, what would you say is the value of attending these screenings—not just as entertainment, but as an educational and cultural experience? 

Medina: The screenings provide more than a cinematic event; they offer a shared classroom where collective learning occurs. Each film comes framed with introductions by faculty and followed by open discussions that spark curiosity and exchange. Students leave with a stronger global awareness, new ways of interpreting film as art, and a deeper appreciation for how storytelling shapes our understanding of the world. 

We also design the festival to complement instruction in many courses within and beyond film studies. Faculty often integrate the screenings into their syllabi, allowing students to connect what they learn in class with what they see on screen. On another level, the festival restores the lost pleasure of sitting together in a theater and sharing a film with an audience. That collective experience—laughing, reflecting, or debating side by side—creates a connection that streaming at home can’t replicate.