The LALIFF Latin festival begins its 22nd edition with the debut of Eva Longoria as a filmmaker

Los Angeles (USA), May 31. The Latino film industry dressed up this Wednesday to inaugurate the 22nd edition of the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival (LALIFF), the most important event for the Hispanic sector linked to the big screen.

This new installment, which takes place at the emblematic TCL Chinese Theater in Hollywood until Sunday June 4, kicked off with the premiere of “Flamin’ Hot”, a film that marks the debut of Eva Longoria as a filmmaker.

The “Desperate Housewives” actress walked with LALIFF founder Edward James Olmos down the red carpet on the Hollywood Walk of Fame before seeing first-hand the reaction to her debut film from nearly a thousand attendees to the event.

“Flamin’ Hot” is written by Lewis Colick and Linda Yvette Chávez and inspired by the autobiographical book “A Boy, a Burrito and a Cookie: From Janitor to Executive” which, in turn, is based on the life of Richard Montañez, the entrepreneur who claims to have invented the Flamin’ Hot Cheetos cheese-flavored corn snack.

In addition to this work, during the next four days, LALIFF will offer 18 feature films, 56 shorts, 7 episodes of television series, and various special projections combined with workshops, conferences, and up to 15 musical events.

“Charcoal”, produced with Argentine and Brazilian capital, is one of the most anticipated of this edition as it features actor César Bordón (“Luis Miguel, the series”) and actress Maeve Jinkings (“All the Women in the World “) as protagonists of a film that starkly portrays the scourge of drug trafficking in a rural area.

On the other hand, the Colombian director Diego Felipe Guzmán presents “The Other Shape” (Colombia and Brazil), a science fiction film -with a great load of social criticism- about humans who must adopt the appearance of a square to access a paradise artificial on the surface of the Moon.

The film “Manuela”, by Argentine director Clara Cullen, completes the list of those that accumulate the most expectations with its narration of a Latin American migrant woman who arrives in Los Angeles to work as a nanny and ends up blurring the social conventions on motherhood.

RELEVANCE OF MUSICAL DOCUMENTARIES IN THIS NEW ISSUE

Other productions also include the Amazon Music documentary titled “Hip Hop X Siempre”, a story that examines the past of this genre and its ties to Latin music to celebrate the Hispanics who were a founding part of the movement.

Also in a documentary key appears in this edition “Patria y Vida: The Power of Music”, a film directed by the singer Beatriz Luengo that deals with the story of six Afro-descendant rappers who rewrote the history of Cuba in 2021 with a lyrical battle for the human rights that triggered the repression of the regime

Legendary actor and filmmaker Edward James Olmos, who recently announced his fight against throat cancer, was the promoter of LALIFF in 1997, a show that has served as a catapult for the careers of Latino celebrities such as Guillermo del Toro, Alejandro G. Iñarritu , America Ferrera or Eva Longoria herself.

True to its commitment to the new batch of Latino filmmakers, LALIFF announced just two months ago that it had reached an agreement with Amazon Studios for the launch of LALIFF Works in Progress, a fund that will allow independent Hispanic talents to complete a “culturally relevant” feature film. and commercial viability.

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