The Latin Connections Film Festival returns this month for its fourth year from May 22nd to June 14th. What started with a handful of screenings has evolved into a dynamic programme celebrating cinema and uniting Scotland with the stories, art, and ideas from Latin America and beyond.
Scotland is home to over 50,000 people with roots in Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula, and many more Scots have visited or connected with these regions. We believe that storytelling through film can bring us closer, bridging cultures and perspectives across continents. Latin Connections aims to offer a platform for filmmakers who tell stories that resonate globally: stories of solidarity, identity, love, and justice.
This edition of Latin Connections will celebrate and bring together the cinema and culture of the countries that connect with Latinidad, hosting a vibrant programme with themes of memory, music, oppression, solidarity, and of course cinema.
This month, our free community screenings at Morningside and Craigmillar libraries will act as a preview for the festival with a programme of Brazilian shorts. Latin Connections begins in earnest with Los restos del pasar (The Trail Left by Time) a film that drifts between fiction and non-fiction, told with stunning sensitivity and poetic realism. It follows a man who, in what feels like his final breath, recalls an Easter Week from his childhood in the village where he grew up; seven days that shaped the adult he would become. Screening in both Edinburgh and Glasgow.
Next we go INTO THE VOID with a collection of shorts focusing on collective dreams in Brazilian contemporary cinema. These films, awarded at prestigious festivals like Locarno, Berlinale, and Cannes, delve into powerful themes of physicality, nature, transformation, and exploitation. Into the Void will be shown in both Edinburgh and Glasgow.
Latin Connections goes back to 1977 with a retrospective screening of the recently restored El cine soy yo (The Moving Picture Man), which tells the story of Jacinto, who, after practicing various professions, becomes a movie projectionist. This versatile man converts his truck into an audiovisual whale in order to show films on the street. El cine soy yo is one of the most representative films of Venezuelan cinema and a celebration of the power of cinema in the most unimaginable circumstances.
The festival will also feature a volcanoes strand, shown in collaboration with the Ixchel Project. We will be screening La hija del volcán (Daughter of the Volcano), introduced by Charlotte Gleghorn of the Ixchel Project and screening both Edinburgh and Glasgow. When 23,000 people died after the eruption of Nevado del Ruiz in Colombia, Jenifer was only one week old. She survived and was adopted in Spain. 30 years later, she decides to reveal the truth about her origins, hidden under the institutional mud of the tragedy.
As part of this strand, we’ll also have a magnificent night of short films about volcanoes at the legendary Leith Dockers, with live music—just like last year—becoming a new tradition in the festival.
In true CinemaAttic tradition, Latin Connections will finish with a bang. We close with a night dedicated to Latin American music through the rhythms of Amazonian cumbia. This event will celebrate one of the region’s most vibrant and influential genres, exploring its roots, evolution, and continued relevance through film, music, and dialogue. At the heart of the evening is a screening of the documentary “La Danza de los Mirlos”, which tells the story of the legendary Peruvian band Los Mirlos, pioneers of psychedelic cumbia and cultural icons whose sound still resonates across generations and borders.
