Films

When life becomes fiction, the boundaries begin to blur. Pedro Almodóvar turns filmmaking, memory, desire, and betrayal into a colorful, melodramatic journey fueled by singer-songwriter Chavela Vargas’s music and the director’s unmistakable cinematic flair.

Kona is a forest-dwelling cat who lives with her mom and grandma. When her mother disappears, Kona embarks on a quest to find her alongside Colin, an orphaned pup, and Bernard, a runaway circus bear.

In Florian Zeller’s elegant psychological drama, Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz are successful professionals (architect and editor, respectively) married to their work, and to each other. Paul Dano, Stephen Graham, and Patrick Schwarzenegger co-star.

A lonely woman, a mischievous nine-year-old, and an unexpected friendship transform an ordinary apartment into a tender, funny world of connection, beautifully captured in Fernando Eimbcke's luminous black-and-white film.

Filmed over 25 years, this prize-winning documentary casts a tender and fearless eye over the lives of two inseparable cousins, Guillermina and Belinda, as they grow up in the rural Argentine Pampas.

A determined sommelier dreams of opening her own wine bar, but life has other plans. Gabe Klinger's charming São Paulo story is a witty, bittersweet toast to reinvention and second chances.

Three eras, one buried story. La bola negra is a mesmerizing cinematic journey through love, memory, persecution, and the quiet wounds passed from one generation to the next, told with haunting beauty.

Against the backdrop of Chile’s transition to democracy, a disappearance at a ski resort pulls a nine-year-old girl into the adults’ pact of silence in director Manuela Martelli’s unnerving political allegory.

After losing her son in a tragic accident, a mother travels from one family to another carrying an apology that may be impossible to accept, in Gabriel Martins' delicate, deeply human meditation on grief and forgiveness.

A mother’s grief becomes a fight for justice when Lorena Gutiérrez takes her daughter’s story to Mexico’s highest halls of power, refusing to let Fátima’s memory disappear.

While preparing for an upcoming swimming trip to Brazil, best friends La Maestra and Paula see their bright futures upended one fateful night. First-time feature director Fernanda Tovar crafts a moving coming-of-age drama in this Berlinale award winner.

MVFF partners with CalArts, UC Santa Cruz, UCLA, California College of the Arts, and CSU Long Beach for a stellar showcase of animated work directed by female and nonbinary filmmakers. This selection features films reflecting family, friendship, life, death, and cultural identity.

MVFF partners with CalArts, UC Santa Cruz, UCLA and CSU Long Beach for a second showcase of animated work directed by female and nonbinary filmmakers. Films include kid-friendly topics like animals, family, friendship, big dreams, and outer space. Appropriate for grades 1-5 (ages 6-10)

"If music could talk, which means whatever your mind can bring.” This collection of documentary short films invite a sense of curiosity and quest, seeking to grasp human thought, motive, and expression. In Nita Blum and Jonathan Pickett’s A NEW INFERNO (US 2026, 16 min), paramedics race to save the lives of heatstroke victims using a radical new treatment. With an experimental sensibility, Karla Condado’s MIRIAM (Mexico 2025, 19 min) copes with grief as the filmmaker reads personal letters to her aunt who was a victim of femicide. Along the picturesque coastline of Brittany, France, bright orange novelty Garfield phones wash ashore in Zack Grant’s eccentric SILLY LITTLE PLASTIC CAT (France/US 2026 12 min). In SWING SWISH SWAY (US 2026, 7 min), TT Takemoto's colorful and tangible reconstruction of history is inspired by Filipina-American Rose Bamberger, founder of Daughters of Bilitis, San Francisco’s own first lesbian activist group. Free-spirited and expressive, Charlie Eguia’s HAPPINESS FOR A HERDER (US/Mongolia 2026, 16 min) follows a group of nomadic herder families in Mongolia. —Diana Sánchez Maciel

When filmmaker Gabriela Pena returns to Valparaíso, Chile, to renovate the house her family left behind decades earlier, she unearths how silences, unspoken fears, and absences have shaped their relationships and approaches to love.

Three eras, one buried story. La bola negra is a mesmerizing cinematic journey through love, memory, persecution, and the quiet wounds passed from one generation to the next, told with haunting beauty.

Watch out, LA—the badass mamalonacitas are coming to a mall near you and they’re taking no prisoners!

With an experimental sensibility, Karla Condado’s Miriam copes with grief as the filmmaker reads personal letters to her aunt who was a victim of femicide.

A humorous punk-rock high school drama centering on an undying craving for an elusive incendiary snack.

“My child, in this lifetime, you will know what it is to be loved.” A beautiful musical story of young love on the shores of a faraway land.