Two festivals for looking at Latin America and the Caribbean from Brussels

For the second time, the KINOLATINO film festival joins PRÓXIMAMENTE to reflect on the representation of a region called Latin America and the Caribbean in the present context, offering a free screening of very unique short films. 

These festivals —spaces we inhabit, sustain and think from Brussels in dialog with the Latin-American region and colleagues— do not limit themselves to screening images: they interrogate the conditions under which those images arrive, circulate and are received in Europe. Who are we who make, programme and think the region from here? How do we observe without extracting? How do we bring realities and audiences closer without translating what is foreign into a language of our own that empties it out? How do we relate to the works and to the people through a respectful and sensitive dialogue?

The underlying question is not only what is shown, but from where one looks and how it is shown. We speak of the moving image —of bodies, territories, memories— and also of peoples in movement, of communities in constant displacement, of lives that migrate, intersect and remake themselves. In that double movement lies a fertile tension: the camera as a form of presence, not of appropriation; the festival as a point of encounter, not of extraction.

Doing this from Brussels —a city crossed by languages, diasporas and borders— adds an inevitable layer. Europe has historically looked at the region through inherited moulds: exoticisation, and the metaphor of "discovery". KINOLATINO and PRÓXIMAMENTE propose a gaze that knows itself to be situated, that recognises its locus of enunciation and that prefers the question to the verdict. Not to come and speak about the region, but to learn from its images and from those who create them.

Toda la vida para siempre (2025)

MEX, BEL
Direction: Sebastián Molina Ruiz
Documentary
18 min.

A collection of dreams from people who were forced to leave their homes. They wander aimlessly, meet in dreams, and search for a way to return home.

O Rio de Janeiro continua lindo (2025)

BEL, BRA, SWI
Direction: Felipe Casanova
Documentary
23 min.

Amid the exuberance of Rio de Janeiro’s carnival, Ilma writes a letter to her son. How does she experience his presence in the crowd? The celebration seems suspended in time, transforming into a space of memory and political resistance.

Donde el Sol Desaparece (2024)

MEX
Direction: Jeoffrey Guillemard
Documentary
4 min.

Thousands of spectators witnessed a total solar eclipse. During the four minutes of darkness, Irma Arellanes told the story of her son’s disappearance. She is part of Los Tesoros Perdidos, a group of mothers whose children have been abducted by drug cartels. Irma turns the solar eclipse into a metaphor for her everyday life.

Servicio necrológico para usted (2024)

CUBA
Direction: María Salafranca
Documentary
12 min.

Maurilio and Fidela, a driver and a service assistant respectively, take us behind the scenes of a funeral home in a small Cuban village. For seventeen years, they have prepared the deceased here, in the very same place where they live together and share their lives and love.