In celebration of National Hispanic Heritage Month, OLA of Eastern Long Island will launch its 22nd annual Latino Film Festival on Wednesday evening at 7 at the Southampton Playhouse with “The Wave (La Ola)” (2025), a musical drama from Chile. A reception for ticketholders will begin at 6. The four-day festival will continue with screenings in Greenport, Wainscott, and Sag Harbor.
“We are celebrating 22 years of culturally vibrant, Spanish-language cinema, presenting five films, representing four countries and various cultures in the diaspora,” said Minerva Perez, OLA’s executive director. “This film festival connects us to our very own humanity at a critical time and remains at the heart of OLA’s dedication to the arts.” The four features share themes of strength and perseverance.
Sebastián Lelio’s “The Wave,” which had its world premiere at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, is set on a college campus in Chile in 2018. Julia, a music student, takes part in an uprising to speak out against the harassment and abuse students there have suffered for years. At the same time she is haunted by an unresolved matter in her personal life, a sexual encounter with Max, her vocal coach’s assistant, which she comes to see as an assault. When she speaks openly about it, it becomes a key element of the protest movement.
Tickets are $12.
The festival will move to the North Fork Arts Center, Sapan Greenport Theatre, next Thursday, when, at 7 p.m., it will show “Queens (Reinas)” (2024), a Peruvian-Swiss award-winning film directed by Klaudia Reynicke. During a period of political unrest in Peru in 1992, two sisters, Lucia and Aurora, are about to leave the country with their mother for a better life in the United States. Before they can do so, their father, who has been absent for most of their childhood, decides he wants to reconnect. Variety called the film a “poignantly subdued period drama” about how two separated parents try to compromise for their children’s well-being.
Tickets are $10.
A family-friendly program is set for 6 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 26, at LTV Studios in Wainscott. “Lila’s Book (El Libro de Lila)” (2017) is a Colombian-Uruguayan animated fantasy adventure written and directed by Marcela Rincon González. Lila is a character from a children’s book who suddenly gets outside of her paper world and becomes trapped in the real world. She eventually realizes that Ramon, the boy who used to read the book she was in years ago, is the only one who can save her. However, he has grown up and stopped reading, and she will have to convince him to believe in fantasy again.
“Lila’s Book” will be preceded by “The Great Feat (La Gran Hazaña)” (2024), a short film from Colombia about Pablo, a 10-year-old boy who needs to rescue his friend Pascualina, who has been kidnapped by the village grocer. The film is directed by Luber Yesid Zuñiga Ordoñez.
The program is free; preregistration has been recommended.
“Corina” (2024), a Mexican comedy-drama directed by Urzula Barba Hopfner, will conclude the festival on Sept. 27 at 8 p.m. at the Sag Harbor Cinema. The film is about Corina, a woman with agoraphobia who must overcome her fears to search for a mysterious writer who will save her job and those of her colleagues. Variety called the film a “refreshingly endearing, subtly stylized debut . . . that transcends lightheartedness and arrives at wisdom.”
Tickets are $10.
All films are in Spanish with English subtitles.
