PHLAFF Week Tres: Virtual Screenings Spotlight Resilience in Latin America

As PHLAFF 2025 charges into its third week of programming, our Virtual Screenings – Week Tres launches an expansive, on-demand collection of films beginning Sunday, June 8 at 9:30 AM and streaming through Saturday June 15. This rich virtual offering includes the LOLA Awards’ Nominated Films and invites global audiences to experience some of the most compelling Latine cinema from anywhere with internet access—an artistic sanctuary of stories that move, challenge, and inspire.

From meditative environmental journeys to intense emotional reckonings and genre-bending experimental narratives, the Week Tres lineup is a testament to the power of regional storytelling to speak globally. This curated experience includes three LOLA-nominated feature films and three robust short film blocks—each designed to ignite curiosity, conversation, and community through the screen.

LOLA AWARD NOMINEES- LOS FEATURES

This year LOLA Nominees explore interior lives and the transformations that occur when the past, present, and imagination collide.

La gravedad no espera (Argentina)
Between Argentina and Chile, choreographer Viviana Iasparra revisits her work Pasado-Mañana (After-Tomorrow). Her artistic process unfolds in real-time—blurring the lines between rehearsal, memory, and performance. Iasparra reflects on the liminality of body and stage, crafting a moving meditation on the unending dialogue between movement and meaning.

Las vidas de un vestido (Argentina)
A poetic ode to revival and the quiet dignity of aging artists, The Lives of a Garment transports viewers to La Casa del Teatro—a refuge for elderly performers. As these garments wait silently on hangers for one last spotlight, the film elevates the metaphor of the dress to mirror lives brimming with unrealized potential and enduring worth.

Retrato de un amanecer (Blue Sunrise) (Argentina)
When Sol and her partner Lucas escape Buenos Aires to settle into provincial life and begin a family, what unfolds is not peace but rupture. Their aspirations unravel under the weight of deeper desires they had yet to confront. Blue Sunrise is a quiet, devastating portrait of self-discovery and the bittersweet cost of authenticity.

LOLA AWARD NOMINEES- LOS SHORTS

Short-form cinema takes center stage in three distinct blocks, each exploring urgent themes through innovative, visually bold storytelling.

Environmental Shorts Block

Here, landscapes become characters and history echoes through rivers, ruins, and mountain ranges.

• Quebrante (Brazil)
A hybrid of folklore and environmental testimony, Quebrante is a haunting, hypnotic portrait of the BR230 Transamazon Highway. Led by Ms. Erismar—affectionately known as The Cave Woman—this ghostly documentary traverses time, stone, and memory in Rurópolis.

• PENCA NO PARQUE (Brazil)
In the lush heart of Belo Horizonte, a cheeky marmoset named Penca stirs up mischief. Equal parts wildlife documentary and whimsical character study, this short makes the case for urban biodiversity through the charm of its smallest inhabitants.

• I walk while glaciers melt (Peru, UK)
This poetic hybrid of animation and live-action takes viewers on a journey through the Andes. The act of walking becomes a spiritual ritual—a reclamation of human connection to earth, myth, and mortality.

• El último hombre sobre la Tierra (Argentina)
Loosely inspired by Fredric Brown’s story Knock, this atmospheric short imagines Earth after environmental collapse. One man, left alone, faces the existential weight of being the final witness to a world undone.

Of Connection Shorts Block

These stories spotlight the messy, magnetic, and often fraught nature of human relationships.

• BURBUJA (Colombia)
In early 2000s Bogotá, four upper-class teenage girls live in a fragile shell of privilege. But jealousy, betrayal, and a cruel prank begin to rupture their so-called bubble. What emerges is an incisive coming-of-age tale on power, identity, and class.

• Dreams Like Paper Boats (Haiti)
In this lyrical hybrid of fiction and personal history, a man clings to a decades-old cassette tape from his wife abroad. Part two of a trilogy, the film evokes the loneliness of migration, the fragility of family, and the ghosts we carry through sound and silence.

• Ocean Blue (United States)
Miranda’s journey into polyamory is told through fluid memory and confessional storytelling. Her exploration of love as oceanic—boundless, shifting—offers a fresh, unapologetic view on relational freedom and fulfillment.

Sci-Fi & Experimental Shorts Block

Bold, bizarre, and deeply introspective, this block delves into dystopia, memory, and otherworldly disruption. This block also includes Los Shorts and a Los Especiales selections.

• La presentación (Argentina)
A couple visits Ana’s parents in a forest cabin for Christmas. When her boyfriend Ezequiel disappears into the woods and returns… different… paranoia and dread simmer beneath domestic routine. A minimalist thriller laced with uncanny tension.

• CROMAESCOPE (Spain)
This web series lovingly spoofs 1950s B-movie sci-fi through rapid-fire dialogue and hilariously lo-fi aesthetics. An AI-crafted backdrop and clumsy effects reinforce its affection for genre tropes—equal parts satire and celebration.

• Llaves (Panama)
When Aron loses his keys, his search becomes an internal descent into identity. Set in an abandoned building and filled with psychological symbolism, Llaves cracks open the idea of self as a locked, shifting enigma.

• En Memoria (United States, Mexico)
In a stark future, a mother fights to complete her daughter’s quinceañera dress—stitched from memory, love, and defiance. This haunting short is both a sci-fi allegory and a tender portrait of maternal resilience.

🎟️ Tickets & Access

All screenings are available for streaming via Eventive from June 8–15. Tickets and access links are available now via the PHLAFF website . Watch on your own time, from anywhere.