The Latinx Project at NYU and Cinema Tropical present the second edition of the Latinx Film Showcase, a one-day series celebrating the remarkable work of U.S. Latinx filmmakers. This year’s program features three acclaimed debut features, all nominated at the 15th edition of the Cinema Tropical Awards, along with talkback sessions with select directors.
The lineup includes The In Between, Robie Flores’ lyrical documentary essay offering an unexpected portrait of the U.S.-Mexico border; Skin of Glass, Denise Zmekhol’s personal documentary and winner of the Cinema Tropical Award for Best U.S. Latinx Film; and In the Summers, Alessandra Lacorazza’s semi-autobiographical drama, winner of the Grand Jury Prize and Best Director Award at Sundance, starring René “Residente” Pérez Joglar in a powerful cinematic debut.
About the Films
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(Robie Flores, USA, 2024, 84 min. In Spanish and English with English and Spanish subtitles)
Following the death of her brother, director Robie Flores (NYU Journalism ‘15) returns to her hometown of Eagle Pass, on the Texas-Mexico border, yearning to turn back time. Immersed in the unruly experiences of adolescence—quinceañeras, Selena, Rio Grande river excursions, teen makeovers, and more—she rediscovers the home her brother adored and she once overlooked. What emerges is a playful dance between personal and collective coming-of-age, as she reclaims joy in the aftermath of grief.
Through her family’s journey, Flores unveils a nuanced and unexpected portrait of the borderlands—one that transcends headlines to offer a deeply human perspective. In celebrating the resilience and spirit of this bi-cultural, bi-national community, the film reveals a place not defined by crisis, but by the vibrancy of those who call it home.
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(Denise Zmekhol, USA/Brazil, 2023, 90 min. 1hr 30 min, In Portuguese, English, and French with English subtitles)
A poetic and personal meditation on displacement, inequality, and loss, Skin of Glass follows the director’s journey as she discovers that her late father’s most celebrated work—a 24-story modernist glass skyscraper in the heart of São Paulo, considered a treasure of mid-20th century South American architecture—has been occupied by hundreds of homeless families. This reckoning forces her to confront the brutal reality of a global crisis: one in six people worldwide are squatters. Through the voices of occupation leaders, city officials, building residents, and architecture scholars, the film turns the history of this landmark into a broader allegory of Brazil’s political and economic turmoil over the past half-century.
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(Alessandra Lacorazza, 2024, 98 min. In English and Spanish with English subtitles.
Siblings Violeta and Eva live in California with their mother, but every summer they travel to Las Cruces, New Mexico, to spend time with their loving but unpredictable father, Vicente (René “Residente” Pérez Joglar in his cinematic debut). Over the course of four formative summers that span adolescence to early adulthood, Violeta and Eva learn to appreciate their father as a person, his flaws and limitations inseparable from his passion and tenderness. Lovers come and go, the backyard goes to seed, but the idea of home remains knotty and elusive.
This powerful and deeply personal directorial debut from Alessandra Lacorazza offers a nuanced study of young people questioning their place within their families, their communities, and their identities. Winner of the US Dramatic Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, In the Summers proves both an emotional capsule of growing up within a fragmented family and a love letter to the resilience needed to survive.