PHLAFF 2026 LOLA Winner Announcement
July 5th marks the end of our festival, so it’s time to reveal our LOLA Award winners for PHLAFF 2026! Read on to learn more about this year’s theme and our award winners and honorable mentions for our 2026 season.
What is LOLA and PHLAFF’s LOLA 2026 Theme?
PHLAFF’s LOLA Awards recognize and honor cinematic achievements in filmmaking that bring together all of the elements that make for a great film, including direction, acting, cinematography, script/writing, and storytelling.
The LOLA Awards were established in 2014 to recognize and honor cinematic achievements in filmmaking in the Latine creative community. Each year, the LOLA Award focuses on a different genre, topic, or story. Past themes have included: documentaries, LGBTQIA+ stories, afrodescendence, collaboration, and more.
In our Los Quince season, PHLAFF’s selected LOLA theme was “joy”. In essence, joy is a powerful, internal wellspring of contentment and purpose, a more profound and stable counterpart to the fleeting nature of happiness, capable of sustaining one through life's varied experiences. It is a more internal and enduring state, a deeper sense of fulfillment and well-being that can be present even in the absence of immediate happiness.
We encouraged filmmakers to explore how their work might relate to this theme, whether directly or more abstractly. What elements of joy were in their work? What is the film’s core, its heart, or its nature? How is this expressed within a film?
Our Screening Committee considered these concepts of joy when viewing LOLA-nominated works. Though nominated films may not have a central focus on joy, elements of the concept are present within portions of the work.
Felicidades to Our LOLA Winners & Honorable Mentions
Congratulations to all the creatives who made this season such an enjoyable journey! Learn more about our 2026 LOLA Award Winners and Honorable Mentions below.
LOLA Award Winners — Los Features
LOLA Award Winners — Los Features
As You Like It - Like That! (dir. Isabel Custer, United States/Chile, 2025)
ESL: More Than a Language (dir. J. William Barlow, United States, 2026)
Libertad (dir. Brenda Avila-Hanna, United States/Mexico, 2025)
Safari (dir. Juan Antonio Bisonó, Dominican Republic, 2024)
LOLA Award Honorable Mentions — Los Features
LOLA Award Honorable Mentions — Los Features
Don Abel: The Main Rooster from Yerbabuena, Jalisco, Mexico Against the World (dir. Miguel Baltazar, United States, 2025)
Kueka, Memoria Ancestral (dir. María de los Ángeles Peña Fonseca, Venezuela, 2025)
Una Chica en la Estación (dir. Cristian Bidone, Argentina, 2026)
LOLA Award Winners — Los Shorts
LOLA Award Winners — Los Shorts
#1 BAD DAD (dir. Natalie Camou, United States, 2024)
A Forever Kind Of Thing (dir. Saylid Lopez, United States, 2025)
CAKE (dir. Erick Juarez, United States, 2025)
En La Quietud De La Noche (dir. Aristides Mantilla, Mexico/United States, 2025)
Gloria (dir. Santi Castelo, Argentina, 2025)
The Soup (dir. Gabe Castro, United States, 2025)
LOLA Award Honorable Mentions — Los Shorts
LOLA Award Honorable Mentions — Los Shorts
Noche de talentos (dir. Julie Ann Moreno Arroyo, Puerto Rico, 2025)
Finding Pá (dir. Enrique Lebrón, United States, 2025)
WHAM! (dir. George Carrillo, United States, 2025)
Thanks for being part of PHLAFF 2026. We can't wait to see you at #PHLAFF2027! Stay tuned for updates on our year-round programming and all things PHLAFF as we enter the latter half of 2026!
