Filmmaking in Chicago can be glamorous, hardy, authentic — and several local directors are proving so through their works at this year’s 41st Chicago Latino Film Festival.
They are telling stories that tackle issues like immigration and identity, and they’re doing so by writing characters and utilizing community spaces that are true to the real people brought to life through their film work.
This year’s festival, opening April 3, contains a handful of locally-made productions, including short films from non-profit theater company Teatro Vista and “Chicago Fire” actor Joe Miñoso’s Mass Epiphany Studios.
In all, the festival comprises 51 feature films and 30 short films from Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe and the United States. Most screenings will be held in Lake View at the Landmark Century Centre Cinema, 2828 N. Clark St., with the opening and closing night galas set for the Davis Theater, 4614 N. Lincoln Ave.
José Pérez, the screenwriting workshop coordinator at Sweet Void Cinema in Humboldt Park, is making his directorial debut with the festival’s world premiere of “What Rhymes with Magdalena?” The feature-length film stars Cher Álvarez as poet Magdalena Coyotecatl, who, on the eve of her wedding, goes a little loca and decides she must visit her exes to find out why love doesn’t favor her.
A “character-driven” screenwriter, Pérez said the first spark for the film came to him some five years ago during a late-night train ride when he saw a woman with a concerned expression, lost in thought. Pérez began to imagine — “because that’s what I do a lot,” he said during a recent chat, — that she was visiting an ex.
“Exes are just an interesting concept to me. To have someone so intimate be in your life, and then they’re not,” Pérez said. “And it’s kind of like, why does that keep happening to this person, and why are they so masochistic as to try to open these wounds?”
Magdalena, like most humans, is complex. She’s the child of immigrants, a bit melodramatic, and, at times, chaotic. She struggles to accept the death of her father, and all she wants is to experience the type of Chicago love story her parents had. (They met in a Mexican bakery, a nod to Pérez’s parents’ real-life story of meeting at El Nopal Bakery in Little Village, where his mother worked behind the counter.)
Watching Álvarez portray Magdalena on screen feels like a frustrating conversation with a best friend who needs a good shaking by the shoulders.
“I think it was important that she be allowed to be flawed as a woman, as a Latina,” Pérez said. “I thought it was more important to be honest than to be anything else.”
“What Rhymes with Magdalena?” will be shown at April 4 and 6 at Landmark Century Centre Cinema.
Three short films set for the festival were made in Chicago, too.
Miñoso, known as Joe Crúz from NBC’s “Chicago Fire,” held a screenplay competition in 2020 at his studios. “Paper Flower,” written by siblings Gabi Mayorga and Jesús Mayorga, was selected as one of three winners, but the production was placed on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
It tells the true story of a 10-year-old boy, Guichi, who involuntarily becomes the primary caretaker for his 7-year-old sister, Gabi, while his immigrant parents face legal struggles. It’s based on the siblings’ experiences of growing up in the 1990s and stars real-life siblings Mia and Jacob Pérez.
The story evolves as the kids overhear their parents converse about finances and whether it’s safe to show up at their places of work with rumors of ICE raids swirling. Guichi explains the whole situation to his younger sister and encourages her to use her imagination to help achieve what she wants most: a trip to Great America.
To make it feel like Chicago in 1990, Miñoso relied on the help of production designer Michael García.
“This was a very low-budget film, and what these guys were able to do with a buck and some gum is amazing,” Miñoso said. (Much of the crew that worked on “Paper Flower” is also a part of the “Chicago Fire” family.) They got permission to use footage from a WTTW documentary about Pilsen made in the ’90s, and were even able to find an apartment building that captured the essence of Chicago some 30 years ago.
“I grew up in the early ’80s as a kid, and that house feels and looks like my house,” Miñoso added.
The festival will also be screening “Hair,” the second-ever short film from Teatro Vista, the veteran Chicago theater and production company.
Co-written and directed by Lorena Díaz (“Chicago Med”) and Wendy Mateo (“The Good Mothers”), the film is set in a beauty salon where patrons are encouraged to “bring your worst in here to be your best out there.”
At the core of the film is the camaraderie formed in Latina salons, where ladies can get beautified and seek communal support. Chicago comedian Gwen La Roka stars as Nina, a woman who tried to bleach her hair blonde (to not-so-great results) after receiving a devastating health diagnosis.
“The film was really inspired by a comedian who ran in Chicago before she passed away from cancer, Nikki Martínez,” Díaz said. “It was like our love letter to [her] … she ended up turning her cancer into her comedy.”
The story was written nearly eight years ago, before Martínez passed away. A 2021 funding grant from Latino Public Broadcasting gave life to the project, which was then produced over two days out of Teatro Vista’s office space in Jefferson Park.
“When Chicago started to introduce tax cuts to the film industry, the work grew for our community, Díaz added. “And what happens is, then we, as the community members and artists and filmmakers, get to reinvest in our community of artists … that community is being formed, and it’s ingrained in our belief that we move forward together.”
“Paper Flower” and “Hair” will be screened alongside the documentaries “Prodigal Daughter” and “En el caliente — Tales of a Reggaeton Warrior” on April 12 and 13, respectively at Landmark Century.