Latin Connections 2026 explores how territory shapes identity and how new generations negotiate their place within complex social, historical, and cultural structures. From the Bolivian Andes to Manzanillo in Costa Rica, from urban neighbourhoods in Venezuela to communities shaped by mining or Afro-descendant heritage, the festival brings together stories where landscape is not just a backdrop, but a protagonist. Through feature films, short programmes, workshops, and special events, Latin Connections creates a space for reflection on youth and belonging, land and extractivism, cultural heritage and resilience, and community and the future.

This year’s tagline, From Our Shores to Yours, speaks to something we care deeply about: reclaiming the agency of Latin American stories, told by their own creators, and bringing them to this island.

The Poster

This year’s poster is a collaborative work between Colombian illustrator John Quiroga and designer Tam Shephard, a decolonial reimagining of the encounter with Latin America. At its centre stands Victoria Santa Cruz, poet, choreographer, composer and activist for the rights of Afro-Peruvian communities. Victoria is our cover image and a signal of what this edition holds at its core: a particular focus on women’s voices, and specially on Afro-Latin experiences. She wears a white dress covered in moons, a nod to one of our favourite short films of the season, The Moon Will Contain Us, directed by Kim Torres. And in her arms, she holds a dog, a quiet reference to one of the feature films we are most excited to share: El Ladrón de Perros, the Bolivian film directed by Vinko Tomicic.

Mining Cinema: Who Pays the Cost?

We open the season with Mining Cinema, part of Resonating Moving Images, organised by Verónica Zela, Sara Guerrero and Ximena. This programme brings together two films separated by seventy years but bound by the same question: who bears the true cost of extraction? Choropampa (2002) and Peru (1932) trace how extractivism has shaped and continues to shape communities and territories across Latin America. Peruvian filmmaker and director of Choropampa, Tito Cabellos, will join us in conversation with anthropologist Sandra Rodríguez for what promises to be a rich and necessary dialogue.

Archivo Radical: Afro Latin Sound and Resistance

Archivo Radical proposes a journey through the archive of Afro-Latin musical and cultural heritage. The evening opens with a workshop led by musician José Rojas: an introduction to the Peruvian cajón, its history and its remarkable influence from Afro-Peruvian and criolla music into flamenco, Latin jazz, trova and beyond. This is followed by a curated programme of five short films drawing from Peru, the Dominican Republic, Cuba and Puerto Rico, each offering a different perspective on Afro-Latin identity, memory and presence. The evening closes with a Landó performance by Soles del Perú. Together, these pieces form an archive of what was never meant to disappear.

Punku

Shot across 16mm, Super 8 and digital formats, Punku,  meaning “portal” in Quechua, is a hybrid fiction film that moves between the seen and the unseen, between realities and dimensions. Director Juan Daniel López Molero will join us in both Edinburgh and Glasgow to bring this work into conversation with its audience.

A Mi Manera (My Way)

Six films. Six acts of making something from nothing. A boat, a sculpture, a safe, a beauty salon. Directors from Argentina, Chile, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Peru and Mexico bring us stories of people who built their own world when the existing one had no place for them. Nothing here is without meaning and in their hands, nothing stays as it was.

Feature Films

June brings five feature films spanning Bolivia, Ecuador, Panama and Spain. La hija del Cóndor, spoken largely in Quechua, is a quiet and powerful commitment to Indigenous language and memory. El Ladrón de Perros, Vinko Tomicic’s visually stunning Bolivian film that premiered at Tribeca, is one of the most joyful discoveries of our season. The Ivy, by Ana Cristina Barragán, won Best Screenplay at Venice. In God Is a Woman, directed by Andrés Peyrot, begins with a hidden copy — footage shot in Panama in 1975 among the Kuna community, lost for decades and rediscovered in Paris fifty years later. A film that raises urgent questions about the relationship between filmmakers and the communities they portray. We close the month with The Gentiles, which premiered at the Seville European Film Festival and later screened at Tallinn Black Nights.

Latin Connections 2026 is an opportunity to explore the ties between identities, territories and stories. We hope you enjoy these weeks of special events as much as we have enjoyed putting them together for you.