NIKI•TOMI•BETO
About the Film
Niki, Tomi, Beto, and Ernie are 4 close-knit cousins growing up in Northeast LA. As Ernie becomes more involved with his gang, he tries to maintain a caring and protective role with the younger Niki, Tomi, and Beto. When the Nahua goddess of refuse and regeneration, Tlazōlteōtl, arrives to intervene in their everyday lives, their tight-knit relationships begin to unravel.
Director: Jon Ayon
Producer: Estevan Padilla
United States // 2025 // Drama // LOLA Award Nominee - Los Shorts
18 minutes
About the Filmmaker
JON AYON is a writer and director from Oakland, CA, by way of Northeast LA, where he was born and raised. Ayon is a native Spanish speaker and earned his bachelor’s degree in cinema production with honors from San Francisco State University and his MFA in documentary film and video production from Stanford University. As a Mestizo (Comcáac/Nahua-Salvadoreño/Xicano) son of Mexican and Salvadoran immigrants, Ayon grew up with a massive family split not only by political borders but also by cultural ones—Indigenous, Spanish, and African. Because of this, Ayon’s work often focuses on the hybridizations and ruptures of ancestral and modern cultures that shape the urban Mestizo family representing a large percentage of immigrant households in North America. Ayon’s documentary films have won awards like the Grand Prize in the 2018 Coppola Director’s Short Competition, 2020 Best Documentary Short from NewFilmmakers LA, and 2022 Full Frame President’s Award, among others. His work has also been nominated for awards from IDA, Screencraft, Nantucket Film Festival, and Slamdance. In 2022, he was awarded the North Star fellowship at Camden International Film Festival and a Filmhouse residency at SFFILM.
As a first-gen filmmaker, Jon Ayon is proudly devoted to telling immigrant stories in an anti-immigrant world.
