Benjamin Bratt breathes angry life into the character Che Rivera in his brother Peter Bratt’s drama about an ex-con troubled over the fact that his son is gay.
A tale of conflict and machismo, but also, perhaps, redemption, “La Mission” gets its title from the San Francisco district of the Bratts’ youth. The film has its Colorado premiere tonight at the 12th XicanIndie Film Festival at El Centro Su Teatro’s new home on Santa Fe Drive.
The annual festival of narrative features, documentaries and shorts by Latino filmmakers runs through Sunday in a cabaret that has been converted into a 120-seat black-box theater.
A reception at 6:30 tonight with comedian, writer and producer Jeff Valdez will precede the 7:30 p.m. “La Mission” screening. Earlier in the day at the Auraria campus and again on Saturday evening Valdez, the XicanIndie Lifetime Achievement award recipient, gives a multimedia presentation “From Pueblo Projects to Hollywood Honcho.”
The Colorado native began as a stand-up comedian, ran a comedy club in Colorado Springs and founded the English-language cable concern SiTv.
Friday night’s lineup continues the notion not only of male relationships but also hard-fought familial redemption with “Contracorriente” (“Undercurrent”) and “Como No Te Voy a Querer” (“How Could I Not Love You”).
Festival throughlines tend to bubble up as programmers begin screening submissions. This year’s XicanIndie’s agile dive into Latino masculinity is no different.
“It surfaced as we looked at films. Often there’s a pulse of what’s going on,” says festival director Daniel Salazar. “Three of the films we selected immediately had that strong thread about male relationships. Two deal with homophobia. And ‘Como No Te Voy a Querer’ focuses on fathers and sons and the difficulties in those relationships. We felt it was a theme neglected in the past.”
Javier Fuentes-Leon’s hauntingly beautiful “Contracorriente” won the audience award for world cinema at the Sundance Film Festival in January.
Set in a Peruvian fishing village, the movie starts off as something of a seaside “Brokeback Mountain.” Miguel and wife, Mariela (Tatiana Astengo), are expecting their first baby. The couple are young mainstays of their community.
When Miguel’s uncle dies, it is Miguel who is asked to say the rites so his kin’s soul will find peace in the afterlife. Yet, Miguel has a secret — lover Santiago, a painter who began coming to the village as a boy.
Early in Fuentes-Leon’s elegiac debut, the story takes a remarkable turn, becoming a magical-realist tale of restless souls, of honoring the dead but also paying heed to one’s own truth. “Contracorriente” isn’t a drama of coming-out anguish so much as is telling exploration of the cultural rules that allow Miguel to love Santiago but think of himself as “not gay.”
There are fugitive rendezvous and tender moments between Miguel (Cristian Mercado, “Che”) and Santiago (Manolo Cardona, the fox in “Beverly Hills Chihuahua”). But many of the exchanges between Mariela and Miguel are just as touching.
In Mexican writer-director Victor Avelar’s involving drama “Como No Te Voy a Querer,” growing up is particularly hard to do for teenager Hugo (Alejandro Belmonte). Or as fest director Salazar puts it, “When’s someone gonna slap some sense into that kid?”
The high-schooler harbors soccer dreams and not much by way of fall- back ambitions. More focused girlfriend Julia (Siouzana Melikian) is tiring of Hugo’s lack of direction.
The movie balances the romantic dramas of the young with Hugo and his father’s more volatile dance of love and contempt. It turns out that as much as we or Hugo’s dad might want it, “slapping sense” into someone is usually the problem.
“XICANINDIE FILM FESTIVAL XXI”
Features, shorts, receptions. El Centro Su Teatro, 721 Santa Fe Drive. Denver’s annual four-day festival of Latino World Cinema. Through April 11. $10 per screening or $25 festival pass. 303-296-0219 or
