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Chicago – The 41st edition of the Chicago Latino Film Festival (Clff) is coming to a close, and their final night film is “Reinas” on Monday, April 14th, 2025, at the Davis Theatre in Chicago’s Lincoln Square neighborhood. This Closing Night screening is followed by a gala after party (at the nearby Dank Haus German American Cultural Center). For more information and tickets, click 41st Clff.

The 41st Clff continues through April 14th. For the weekend schedule, click Clff Final Weekend.

Closing Night Film of the 41st Clff is ‘Reinas’

Photo credit: ChicagoLatinoFilmFestival.org

Co-writer/director Klaudia Reynicke’s poignant coming-of-age drama is set in 1992 Peru during the “fujimorazo,” when President Alberto Fujimori assumed full legislative and judicial powers after dissolving his government. Elena plans to leave the country with her daughters Lucía and Aurora but needs Carlos, their absent father, to sign their departure permits. This gives Carlos the opportunity...

In 1992, Peru existed in a state of suspension, trapped between political violence and economic collapse. The Shining Path insurgency and President Alberto Fujimori’s governmental crackdown created a backdrop of fear: curfews emptied streets, blackouts silenced homes, and food shortages tested the population’s endurance. Reinas immerses its characters in this unsettling environment, exploring the lingering impacts beyond visible conflict.

Director Klaudia Reynicke, a Swiss-Peruvian storyteller connected to this period, creates a narrative balancing personal experiences with wider social tensions. Her approach avoids dramatic spectacle, instead focusing on the quiet intimacy of familial struggle. The story centers on Elena, a mother seeking her estranged husband Carlos’s permission to emigrate to the United States with their daughters. This simple premise reveals complex human experiences of resilience and hope.

Reynicke’s narrative explores the spaces where human intentions collide with overwhelming circumstances. Political unrest remains a shadow, present yet not consuming.

The Swiss-Peruvian-Spain co-production Queens, co-written and directed by Klaudia Reynicke, is set amidst the grueling reign of Alberto Fujimori’s dictatorship in the 1990s. During the social and political unrest, the story centers on the goings-on of an unconventional family living in Lima. Elena (Jimena Lindo) is a mother of two young daughters (Abril Gjurinovic and Luana Vega) who has chosen to accept a job offer in Minnesota to escape the country’s turmoil. However, she needs the legal signature of her estranged husband, Carlos (Gonzalo Molina), in order to take her children with her. When Carlos comes back into the picture, the girls, who don’t particularly enjoy his company, soon grow fond of him, complicating any chance of safety Elena has in store.

After premiering at Sundance, the film won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Feature in the Generation Kplus strand of Berlin. In Switzerland’s Locarno Film Festival,...

“Quinografía,” a portrait of the famously timid Mafalda cartoonist Quino, and “Habana Libre,” a take on rebellious youth in Cuba, look like potential standouts at Ventana Docs, a selection of 12 doc features from across Latin America and Spain.

A notable number have been developed at prestigious labs, whether Sundance Festival programs or Spain’s Pompeu Fabra University. Two tell trans stories and with it, chart resistance and intolerance, main banes of other Ventana Sur titles.

Many are intimate stories, of the director’s battle with HIV (“How to Live With…”), or reconnection with his father (“Capitan”), or battle to accept his father’s suicide (“The Curve”). Some mix the personal and a larger political canvas, as in “Violent-House-Fiction” and “Family Politics” where the director reconnects with his family as his father battles for office representing ex-dictator Alberto Fujimori’s far right-wing Cambio 90 party.

At least a third of the doc features are co-produced with Spain,...

In the midst of the chaotic Alberto Fujimori dictatorship, two girls and their mother plan to leave Lima for the United States, but they first attempt to reconnect with the estranged father. Such is the premise of Reinas, the third feature film by Klaudia Reynicke. A proper emulation of 1992 Lima was of particular importance to the filmmakers. Below, cinematographer Diego Romero Suarez-Llanos dives deep into the lighting schemes the filmmakers used to pull it off. See all responses to our annual Sundance cinematographer interviews here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer […]

The post “Light Cannot and Should Not Limit the Movements of the Actors”: Dp Diego Romero Suarez-Llanos on Reinas first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

In the midst of the chaotic Alberto Fujimori dictatorship, two girls and their mother plan to leave Lima for the United States, but they first attempt to reconnect with the estranged father. Such is the premise of Reinas, the third feature film by Klaudia Reynicke. A proper emulation of 1992 Lima was of particular importance to the filmmakers. Below, cinematographer Diego Romero Suarez-Llanos dives deep into the lighting schemes the filmmakers used to pull it off. See all responses to our annual Sundance cinematographer interviews here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer […]

The post “Light Cannot and Should Not Limit the Movements of the Actors”: Dp Diego Romero Suarez-Llanos on Reinas first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Waiting for the premiere of his first feature “Once Upon a Time in the Andes,” presented at Chile’s Sanfic Industria, Peruvian helmer Rómulo Sulca Ricra is already developing his next project. Under the working title “Ayahuanco,” it will focus on a man who, after living in Europe, comes back to Peru.

“He left because of the political situation in the country – his mother was forcefully sterilized as part of former president Alberto Fujimori’s 1990s birth control policy. Now, she is dying of ovarian cancer,” says Sulca Ricra, calling his new endeavor “ambitious.”

“It will be a road movie! It will take place in Lima, Ticlio, we will start from the Pacific coast and move through the Peruvian Andes and the jungle. This character gets to know himself again upon his return, gets to know his roots and discovers new details about his parents. His father was a part...

A brilliant, celebrated performer accepts a low-profile gig in unfamiliar environs, only to be trapped as the situation falls apart around her. But enough about Julianne Moore agreeing to star in “Bel Canto,” and let’s keep the focus on Paul Weitz’s po-faced hostage melodrama itself, which strands a world-renowned American soprano in the crossfire between an oppressive government and desperate insurgents in an unspecified South American nation. Ann Patchett’s much-lauded 2001 novel was optioned upon publication for its seemingly surefire cinematic fusion of high romantic and political stakes, yet until a sudden, bloody climax, this belated adaptation remains a blandly perfumed, low-peril affair.

With an enviable international ensemble — including Moore, Ken Watanabe and Sebastian Koch — all looking variously out of sorts, only an unseen Renee Fleming, who lends her gorgeously shaded vocals to the leading lady’s lips, emerges on song. Moore’s name will draw some interest...