A brand new, multi-day free film festival event is set to kick off this weekend, November 8th through 10th, across OKC, celebrating the art, creativity, and voices of the full Latino community of Oklahoma and far beyond.
They’re calling it the Oklahoma Latin American Film Festival, or the OLA for short. And if that sounds like a similar mission statement to the long-running Cine Latino Film Festival in OKC’s Calle dos Cinco, there’s a reason for that.
Following some creative differences and disagreements over the direction and organizational future of that earlier annual fest, Cine Latino founders Rogelio Almeida and Victor Caballero chose to part ways with the Capitol Hill/Calle dos Cinco leadership and finally take their cultural cinematic showcase citywide.
The result is a full scale new multi-day, multi-venue film festival event that came together just about seven and a half months after this year’s Cine Latino, a pretty remarkable feat given the city-spanning partnerships and world-spanning filmmakers that the new festival spotlights.
“It was really Rogelio that said ‘hey, if we’re going to do this and branch out and do our own thing, then it should be in the fall around Hispanic Heritage Month,’” Caballero told OKC Free Press in a call Monday ahead of the new festival’s launch. “So it all came together quickly.”
But even though the OK Latin American Film Festival and its student-oriented filmmaking Institute were officially created, branded, and launched in just a matter of months, the ideas behind it have been bubbling beneath the surface for awhile.
“We started talking back in 2024 or even earlier about wanting to branch out more and get festival to a bigger audience, a bigger platform, and bigger partnerships,” Almeida said on that same call. “So when it came time to launch OLA, we knew that we wanted to create a new festival and institute that had both of our visions at the forefront.”
Part of that vision means breaking out of the Calle dos Cinco area and incorporating more of the city’s sprawl into the festivities, partnering closely with deadCenter to bring the fest into Rodeo Cinema in the Stockyards and partnering also with the SW 29th District and the University of Central Oklahoma.
“It’s great to just not feel cuffed or chained to anything with this new festival and especially with the new OLA Film Institute,” Caballero said.
This new iteration of the high school and college-focused Film Institute is at the heart of the OK Latin American Film organization.
Institute students have once again created a new, original short film that will premiere during the festival, “Half & Half,” developed by the newly established OLA Film Institute alongside deadCenter University and Oklahoma City University.
It’s one of 26 curated films on the program over the weekend, including a selection of documentary and narrative features and a full slate of more than 20 shorts culled from all corners of the global Hispanic and Latin community.
“We’ve got films from the US, Mexico, Canada, Central America, South America and Brazil, Spain, and even Portugal, because we do accept films in Portuguese as well,” Almeida explained. “And that’s kind of how it could happen so quickly, because we just started reaching out to everyone all over saying ‘send us your film. If you’ve got a film, send it.’ Like it was very grassroots.”
Those films from all over the world not only offer glimpses into different aspects of life across the Latino Diaspora, but also explore many of the deep social issues of the world’s current moment.
Documentary feature “Ayahuasca Now,” looks into the effect of shamanic ceremonies on war-borne PTSD.
The short “Clandestina,” produced through deadCenter University and Oklahoma City Community College, examines the passion and creative spirit through the lens of the immigrant experience in America.
Comedy short “New Service” takes an exaggerated look at the complications of new consumer technologies and apps.
Opening Night feature documentary “Did You Guys Eat?” takes viewers into the widely diverse agricultural landscape of Michigan and into the complexities of modern farming.
And some even take a direct and blunt look at the most pressing and concerning developments of the Latin American experience right now, like documentary feature “Boundless Borders,” following an undocumented Guatemalan student pursuing college in America, and short “Encuentro Americano,” observing diner patrons against the tensions of the 2024 election.
“Right now, in this moment, we need to be able to come together,” Almeida said. “And I feel like spaces like this, like a film festival that celebrates Latin American culture and focuses on Latin American issues, where these filmmakers can have their voices heard and bring their families and friends, that’s very important. It’s in the back of my head all the time.”
And this time around, the focus will be more purely on those voices and on the cinematic art that they’ve created.
Rather than running the films alongside the massive, communal party environment of the old Cine Latino festival, this time, the Oklahoma Latin American Film Festival will take guests into the Rodeo Cinema theater, where the lights will go down, the sound will come up, and the expressions and emotions will take center stage.
“This will be the first time for us that our festival is in a real movie theater,” Almeida said. “The Yale Theatre was so great, but there’s just something really special about being able to present these films and these voices in a real theater with that kind of movie theater quality.”
The inaugural Oklahoma Latin American Film Festival runs Saturday, November 8th through Monday, November 10th at Rodeo Cinema and the University of Central Oklahoma.
The event is entirely free.
For more information, visit olafilm.org.
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Brett Fieldcamp is our Arts and Entertainment Editor. He has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for 15+ years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.