33rd Annual San Diego Latino Film Festival

Raices Short Film Program

This program explores ancestry, tradition, and Indigenous roots, as well as immigration stories and intergenerational narratives. These films celebrate the richness of Latino cultural heritage and the diverse experiences that shape identity across generations.

Showtimes: Saturday, March 21, 2026: 5:00 (w/ filmmaker Q&A to follow)
Location: Digital Gym Cinema

Film program

HAAGUA (15 min, Mexico/USA, 2025)
Directors: Marc Antony Chavez & Octavio Aceves Coutiño
Synopsis: An Indigenous surf film that celebrates the timeless bond between humanity and the ocean, “Haagua” follows a group of Native surfers as they revive ancestral traditions, blending cultural resilience with the art of surfing to honor the past and inspire the future.

Dancing as Prayer: A Community Honors Its Roots Through Danza Azteca (6 min, USA, 2025)
Director: Alejandro Tamayo
Synopsis: Discover the profound meaning and cultural significance behind Aztec dance. This video explores the spiritual connection between dancers and their ancestors, as they move to the rhythm of tradition. Learn about the symbolism, the prayers, and the community that comes together to keep this ancient practice alive.

Saq Nikté y El Espíritu de la Máscara (4 min, Guatemala, 2025)
Director: Ester Weiner
Synopsis: Set in a remote community in Guatemala, the film follows Iq’, a curious and playful spirit who listens to the sound of an old invocation that summons him to the world of the living. At the other end of that prayer is Saq Nikté, an 11-year-old Mayan Kʼicheʼ girl, who forges a mask as an offering to the spirit.

Nhandê (13 min|Brazil, 2025)
Directors: Begê Muniz & Elisa Telles
Synopsis: Sara, a 12-year-old girl from the Amazon, begins to form emotional connections with other young people her age. However, a series of supernatural events and visions of Indigenous rituals disrupt her life, awakening a deeper sense of awareness.

Los que esperan (12 min, Mexico, 2025)
Director: Medardo Treviño Cruz
Synopsis: Los que esperan (Those Who Wait) follows Fidel, a boy whose older brother has disappeared in a small town in northern Mexico, surrounded by adult silence and unanswered questions, he turns to imagination to cope, wearing his brother’s clothes, calling his phone, sensing presences where memory and reality begin to blur.

Kusi Sonríe (15 min, Peru/USA, 2025)
Director: Sisa Quispe
Synopsis: Kusi, visits her family to join an annual celebration in the Andes of Ayacucho, Peru. Her life changed after the passing of her mother. Kusi has been trying to run away from the pain of her loss, and this gets triggered when she is asked to sing at the reunion, a tradition she used to do alongside her family.

Sukua (15 min, Colombia, 2025)
Director: Omar E. Ospina Giraldo
Synopsis: Pirimín, a Kogui boy, receives a water gun as a gift. That night, he hears his father express his discontent when similar weapons forced them to abandon their settlements. Now Pirimín doesn’t know what to do with the toy.

Sangre de Plomo (24 min, Perú, 2025)
Director: Totino Ríos
Synopsis: Toxic smoke from a smelting plant has turned an entire community into wasteland. Most have fled, but Rolando and Estela, a young couple, remain. As they cling to remnants of a town nearly vanished, waiting becomes unbearable. A miscarriage and a sudden illness threaten their dreams of a new life.