Boston Latino film festival reaches for more
Just three years old, the Boston Latino International Film Festival is still something of a young upstart. Similar events in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, and even Providence have all been around longer. But each year audiences welcome back Boston's festival, which opens its nine-day run on Friday, like an old friend.
Festival director Jose Augusto Barriga says the event's reputation is growing nationally and internationally, which may help give local Latino filmmakers the kind of clout their counterparts enjoy in other cities.
''We have an especially strong Latino community in LA and New York," he says, speaking by phone. ''Here in Boston we have a community that's very enthusiastic, but it's going to take awhile."
Working out of his Inman Square apartment, in 2002 Barriga organized what was first known as the Cambridge Latino Film Festival. Last year, the festival was renamed to reach a broader audience. Barriga says the fest drew 2,400 people in its first year and that the number has grown by about 50 percent each year.
Screenings for the fourth annual festival will be held at the Harvard Film Archive, MIT's Stata Center, and the Center for Latino Arts in the South End. Admission is free two days of the festival, Oct. 17 and 18, and all foreign-language films have English subtitles. What began as a weeklong event with three dozen films has grown into a program that features more than 80 pictures from 16 countries.
The opening night gets off to a strong start with ''Al Otro Lado" (''To the Other Side"), Natalia Almada's powerful documentary on an aspiring musician named Magdiel who faces a stark choice to better his life: traffic drugs or cross the US/Mexico border illegally. The 23-year-old comes from a poor village and can't bear to scrape by as a fisherman or minimum wage-earning factory worker. Magdiel composes corridos, poignant songs that tell stories about life's hardships. He desperately wants to come to America and meets a man who smuggles people across the border.
''Al Otro Lado" ends on an ambiguous, but realistic, note as Magdiel, carrying two Virgin Mary figurines, nears the border. Almada says she wanted to resist making a film that gives easy answers about complex problems. This year marks the first time the 30-year-old director will present her work at the Boston Latino International Film Festival; she says ''Al Otro Lado" drew enthusiastic responses at the Tribeca Film Festival and Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival.
''It's exciting to take the film to a place like Boston," Almada says by phone from Mexico City. ''It seems to me it's a great place for a diverse audience."
''Al Otro Lado" is among several standout films on the schedule. The documentary ''The Devil's Miner," directed by Kief Davidson and Richard Ladkani, tells the harrowing story of a 14-year-old who works in a Bolivian silver mine; Manuel Martin's psychological drama ''Weakness of the Bolshevik" follows the intense friendship between a teenage girl and the man who's harassing her sister; and Marisol Torres makes her feature film debut with ''Boricua," a semi-autobiographical look at the lives of four Puerto Rican youths in Chicago. The lineup also includes features, shorts, and films that explore the gay Latino and Jewish Latino communities.
Panels are also part of the festival, and Los Angeles-based Latino Public Broadcasting is sponsoring a discussion of how filmmakers can use public television to present their work, what it takes to get funded, and how to find producers. The organization is co-presenting three films at the festival that will be shown on its network next year.
''These events like the Boston Latino International Film Festival allow the general public to see wonderful films from Latin America and elsewhere," says Luca Bentivoglio, the group's executive director. ''Otherwise, where do you find them?"
Rhonda Stewart can be reached at rstewart@globe.com. 
