From the Lumière brothers to “Secret in Their Eyes”, cinema has shown itself to be a cultural asset that explains the human soul in the most eloquent way. At the beginning of October the London Latino Film Festival opens, its purpose to show through film the essence of a diverse and legendary culture.
Pablo Muñoz
From 2nd until 6th October, the British capital will become the epicentre of Ibero-American art with the arrival of the first edition of the London Latino Film Festival.
The event, which will get started with an inaugural gala in the Barbican Centre, in the City of London, will celebrate the richness of latino cinematography in the middle of the city.
The event will bring together renowned figures from the Latin American arts. Among the guests are the Cuban ballet dancer Carlos Acosta, the Argentinian actor Óscar Martínez and the Cuban actor Jorge Perugorría. The latter two are, together with the Cuban actress Jacqueline Arenal, patrons of the Festival.
Acosta, Perugorría and Martínez – who is a member of the Argentine Academy of Letters – will take part in a question-and-answer session following the showings of their work. For example, Acosta, formerly a Royal Ballet principal dancer, will participate after the showing of “Yuli: The Story of Carlos Acosta”, a 2018 full-length film that depicts his childhood and his journey from Havana to international dance stages.
Culturally, the festival will showcase a diverse artistic range. One of the most striking performances is the exhibition of traditionally made Cuban cinema posters. Amid lengthy power cuts across the island, the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC) printed these pieces by hand in Havana. Each design, uniquely stamped for the occasion, can be viewed in the Eclectic Gallery from 28th September for three weeks.
Elsewhere, the festival offers an educational programme including three workshops at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, among which are a conversation between the author Alec Marsh and the songwriter James Grant, a conversation with Natali Simmonds about the resilience of the world of writing and a lecture on scriptwriting given by the scriptwriter Gonzalo Maza, co-scriptwriter of the Oscar-winning Chilean film “A Fantastic woman”.
The driving force behind this initiative is the Cuban actress Ketty Rodríguez who, after moving to London in May 2025, immediately noticed a marked cultural absence. Rodríguez said in an interview with the BBC that she could not “find her people”. She confessed to the same channel her impression that, despite Europe’s rich cinematographic past and its incredible artistic scene, so few people were familiar with latino cinema in the United Kingdom. She said, “It’s extremely underrepresented despite a big community here, so I decided to do something about it.”
Scarcely three months after her arrival, Rodríguez put a working group together and formed a sponsorship network which bore fruit immediately: the call for submissions attracted hundreds of proposals including full-length films, documentaries, cartoons and shorts, many of which will compete for awards at the festival in five categories: the Official Competition, the Environmental Competition, Young Star, Family Cinema and Latino Legacy.
The jury will consist of several professionals in the sector like the actress Mónica Lopera, the film-maker Carlos Barba and the scriptwriter Gonzalo Maza. The London Latino Film Festival takes on a special significance when the local demographic context is observed. According to data from an analysis of the 2021 census carried out by academics from King’s College London, approximately 157,800 Latin Americans live in the British capital, a figure that rises to almost 187,800 when the unregistered population is included.
Despite its magnitude, the British census does not include a specific category for this group, forcing immigrants to classify themselves under the generic label “any other ethnic group”.
The London Latino Film Festival has the institutional backing of the British Film Institute thanks to funding from the National Lottery and the City of London Corporation’s Destination City Partnership Fund. In addition, the initiative is supported by the Cervantes Institute and various Latin American embassies in the United Kingdom.
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(Translated by Philip Walker – Email: philipwalkertranslation@gmail.com) – Photos: London Latino Film Festival.
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