The 2025 Orange County Latino International Film Festival (OCLIFF) is proud to close its Saturday lineup of short and feature films with writer-director José Paredes’ Entre actores (Amongst Actors), screening Saturday, September 20th at 7:30PM.
Cristobal Dearie and Ale Yáñez star as Rodrigo and Diana, two best friends living in Tijuana, Mexico. When Diana decides to move to Mexico City to further advance her career as an actress, the separation forces Rodrigo to wrestle with the decision to stay silent and support her dreams, or share his true feelings for her.
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This year’s Orange County Latino International Film Festival (OCLIFF) returns Friday, September 19th – Sunday, September 21st! In anticipation of 2025’s full weekend of films celebrating the unique lens of the contemporary Latinx experience, join us Saturday, September 13th for a special matinee screening of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Amores Perros–celebrating 25 years since its 2001 U.S. release!
Years before making history as only the third filmmaker to win back-to-back Best Director Oscars at the Academy Awards (for 2014’s Birdman and 2015’s The Revenant) – as well as being the first non-U.S.-born filmmaker to do so – Iñárritu’s debut feature Amores Perros took the world by storm, earning three awards at the Cannes Film Festival, as well as over 50 additional international film prizes. A tragic car accident in Mexico City becomes the link between three seemingly separate lives: Octavio (Gael García Bernal), a young man desperate to escape his violent home life; Valeria (Goya Toledo), a glamorous model whose world unravels after an unexpected mishap; and El Chivo (Emilio Echevarría), a disillusioned hitman seeking redemption. A visceral and unflinching portrait of love and loss on the streets of Mexico City, Amores Perros is told through three interwoven stories connected by fate, betrayal, and more than a couple of ill-fated dogs.
Presented in Spanish, with English subtitles.
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The 2025 Orange County Latino International Film Festival (OCLIFF) is proud to open its 2025 fest with director and co-writer Miguel Angel Ferrer’s La sombra del sol (The Shadow of the Sun) — Venezuela’s official entry for the 96th Academy Awards!
Leo (Carlos Manuel Gonzalez) is a blue-collar worker with a musical past, living in the remote Venezuelan city of Acarigua. Struggling with debt and problems at home, he does whatever he can to stay afloat. One day, his younger brother Alex (Anyelo Lopez), deaf since birth, presents him with a possible way out: to enter a musical contest in Caracas with a song Alex has written, where the grand prize could solve all of Leo’s financial troubles. Pressured by circumstance, Leo must take a leap of faith, awaken his dormant musical talent, and embark on an unforgettable journey that could change both he and Alex’s lives.
Winner of the Audience Award at the Miami Film Festival; Best Latin American Film at the Monterrey Film Festival; and both the Special Jury Prize and Best Actor Awards at the Seattle Film Festival.
Presented in Spanish, with English subtitles.
Our evening will open with a special screening of short film A Congress of Crows, by director Sean Martinez.
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Join us at The Frida Cinema for a special matinee screening of Mexican romantic classic Maclovia, presented by Alta Baja Market as part of their Rancho Gordo Encuentro Festival!
On a small Mexican island dwells a group of Indians who live in the traditional manner and who disdain outsiders. The beautiful Maclovia and the poverty-stricken Jose Maria are in love, but her father refuses to allow their marriage, or even any communication between them, due to Jose Maria’s lack of means.
As part of this special event, we will be offering General Admission tickets for $12 and a special Rancho Gordo VIP Lunch ticket that includes a full meal of Rancho Gordo goods from Alta Baja Market + admission to the film for $32!
This program is a venue rental engagement. The views and opinions expressed in this program do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of The Frida Cinema or its staff.
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When a twenty-something retail clerk encounters a rising pop star, he takes the opportunity to edge his way into the in-crowd. But as the line between friend and fan blurs beyond recognition, access and proximity become a matter of life and death.This is Lurker.
The directorial debut from The Bear and Beef writer-producer Alex Russell, Lurker is an exhilarating cat-and-mouse thriller made for the moment. Online fixation meets reality in this parasocial, paranoid film driven by a brilliant score and star-making performances.
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Hot off of screening at Toronto International Film Festival, The Frida Cinema is excited to present weeklong run of Sam Hayes’ new film Pools.
Kennedy has one day to get her shit together or get kicked out of school for good. Instead of buckling down, she rallies a ragtag crew for a midnight pool-hopping adventure through the lavish estates of her college town. But under the surface, Kennedy is searching for answers to the questions tearing her up inside in the wake of her father’s death. As the secrets spill, this wild escape becomes a cathartic journey of self-discovery.
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Love, Brooklyn is about Brooklynite writer assigned with writing a piece on the borough’s renaissance post-COVID. With his work deadline looming, he bikes around the borough, and at the same navigates the complexities of intertangled relationships in his life, including with: Casey (Nicole Beharie), his gallerist ex-girlfriend whom he is trying to remain friends with and who is dealing with her own professional deadlines; Nicole (DeWanda Wise), his new situationship who is a recent widow and new single mother studying to be a massage therapist; and Alan (Roy Wood Jr.), his best friend who is increasingly interested in cheating on his wife. Like Brooklyn itself, our characters are at moments in their lives where they need to leap forward while also needing to hold onto the pasts that have shaped them.
Premiering at Sundance earlier this year, Love, Brooklyn is a deeply romantic film, focusing on the connections of these characters and how they choose to operate within a changing world, both individually and together. The film’s tone is remarkably lovely in a way that we so rarely get to see from romantic dramas.
The film is the debut feature from filmmaker Rachael Abigail Hodler, and a large part of her intention in achieving this tone was to tell a story of Black people that isn’t seeped in tragedy. As she put it in her director’s statement from the film’s Sundance press notes: “As a filmmaker, I want to tell stories about sensitive Black people who cry and feel, in life not tragic or saccharine… I hope to expand the representation of what it means to be Black and what’s cool about this moment of inclusion in storytelling is that I don’t have to try to represent Blackness as a whole or all Black people. I can be really specific with how I see people, how they love, hide from love and ultimately show up for it. I want to show the soft parts of the people who look like me. I want to show the sensitive bits that show up, not when we are in danger or inferior but when we are in love.”
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The Baltimorons is a mirthful and intimate holiday gem—Jay Duplass’s solo directorial debut since 2012—that transforms a cracked tooth into a night of transformative encounters. Against the wintry backdrop of Baltimore, an unlikely romance unfolds between a newly sober comedian and his reserved dentist in a walk-and-talk odyssey of quiet humor, emotional honesty, and offbeat charm.
Winner of SXSW’s Audience Award, this modestly magnetic film is both a gift to indie lovers and a tender celebration of connection in the most unexpected of hours.
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This screening is open to Film Club Members only.
To learn more about the Frida Film Club or become a member, click here!
In anticipation of our upcoming run of the new 4K Restoration of visionary French filmmaker Leos Carax’s The Lovers on the Bridge (Sept 12 – 18), we are pleased to treat our Film Club Members with a rare opportunity to experience his 1986 masterpiece Mauvais sang (Bad Blood) on the big screen!
In a near-future Paris, residents are gripped with fear by a mysterious sexually transmitted plague. A dying gangster enlists young thief Alex (Denis Lavant) to steal the serum that could mean humanity’s salvation. Caught between underworld rivalries, the shadow of his late father, and the suffocating weight of expectation, Alex navigates a landscape of danger and deceit that becomes even more complicated when he encounters Anna (Juliette Binoche), the much younger mistress of his employer, sparking a chain of events that threaten both their lives.
A stylish and surreal blend of crime drama, romantic fable, and pop-art cinematic poetry, Carax’s 1986 award-winner is a feverish meditation on love, risk, and mortality that cemented him as one of cinema’s great modern romantics.
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Celebrate the 20th Anniversary of Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan’s visionary reimaging of the the Dark Knight’s origin story.
Haunted by the murder of his parents, billionaire Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) travels the world seeking the means to fight injustice. Trained by the mysterious League of Shadows and its formidable leader Ra’s al Ghul, Bruce returns home to wage war on corruption and crime, adopting the guise of masked vigilante Batman. Alongside allies Alfred (Michael Caine), Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), and Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman), Batman wages battle the deadly Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy), unaware of the true sinister threat looming over Gotham City.
Dark, gritty, and emotionally charged, Batman Begins breathed new life into the iconic character, and set the stage for one of the most acclaimed trilogies in modern cinema.
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