We live in dark and turbulent times. Following the news cycle can make you want to throw your phone into Monterey Bay and go live in the redwoods with coyotes. Every headline hits you like a punch in the gut. But from March 12th through March 21st, the 14th Annual Watsonville Film Festival offers an antidote. As people of color are misrepresented and erased, the Latine community of Watsonville is using cinema to reclaim agency, tell their human story and resist the powerful forces that prefer silence.
Watsonville Film Festival (WFF) Executive Director and Co-Founder Consuelo Alba asked me, “Just reading the news every day, it gets crazy, right? That’s why I’m so excited about the festival this year; our theme is ‘Art As Resistance’. The festival this year is about telling our stories to strengthen our communities through film.”
The 14th Annual Watsonville Film Festival opens in Watsonville at Green Valley Cinema from March 12 through March 15, Q&As and evening celebrations. It then travels south to Salinas for a special program at Maya Cinemas on March 19 and 20. The festival concludes in Santa Cruz on March 21 with a final day of films and gatherings at the 418 Project.
Over 7 days, in three cities, the festival will screen over 50 films, stage a Q&A with their creators and stars after each film, will offer poetry, music, a Filmmaker Summit of panels with industry leaders, networking, coffee and burritos.
It is no secret that Mexicans work harder than anyone and party even harder. Each evening concludes with an after-party. I attended an after-party in Watsonville once and lived to tell about it; I can’t recall what I did or said that night but am pretty sure it was part of the cultural exchange.
The Watsonville Film Festival has become one of the few places in the county where tech workers, farmworkers, artists, and aging surfers can sit in the same room without arguing about housing. It has built a community of filmmakers who are bound and determined to illuminate humanity; the familia of it, the beauty and laughter of it. Representation matters now more than ever, and the festival fully intends to spark dialogue and inspire change.
Festival Director Alba says many of these films are being produced in Watsonville and then they go to the festival circuit. With 50 films this year, it is becoming a film town. LA seems to be noticing the amazing quality of film coming out of Watsonville and David Aguilar is coming up from LA to screen “Hangtown”. I watched three trailers for this year’s WFF and taken together, they trace an emotional journey about the discovery of fear, the confrontation with inherited trauma, and the long, unfinished work of freedom.
“Hangtown”
“Hangtown” is an autobiographically inspired story written and directed by Los Angeles film maker David Aguilar about growing up in Placerville, California (nicknamed Hangtown for 1849 vigilante justice.) Placerville is a town where a kid can grow up speaking English, think he’s American and then discover the country has other ideas.
Aguilar says writing about the racism he grew up with in Placerville “was all gut.” He remembers walking down Main Street on his way to school and passing the Hangman’s Saloon. Every day he’d look up to see a life-size dummy with black hair, dark skin, and a handlebar mustache hanging from a noose. David told me, “The dummy looked like the adult men in my family, my uncles, my father. It had similar facial features. Every day I was reminded, I don’t fit in here.” Aguilar remembers his father had a print of the Mexican Revolutionary Emilio Zapata that hangs in David’s home office today. “That dummy hanging by a noose looked like Emilio Zapata.” He says he was never called the traditional racial slurs like “wet back” or “spic.”. “In Placerville I was called the N-word.”
Screening at the Watsonville Film Festival, Saturday, March 14th, 5:30pm, at Cinelux Green Valley Cinema, “Hangtown”is not coming-of-age white bread fare. The movie opens with 12-year-old Sammy riding his bike by the famous Placerville dummy in the hangman’s noose. Subconsciously trying to fit in, Sammy opens his Dukes of Hazard Lunchbox, with the Confederate Flag on it. Then as a teenager Sammy is forced to relive the discriminations his Mexican immigrant parents lived through. He doesn’t speak Spanish but finds a father figure in a fleeing Mexican immigrant. He takes charge as armed vigilantes close in on both of them.
Director Aguilar says that he wished he could have seen a film like “Hangtown” when he was 12. “If there had been, maybe I would have had my own cultural awakening a little sooner and stood a little taller each day.” He says he might have known that there was “space for me to exist, exist in the world on a larger stage, where cinema and film and art was all available to me, and that my story mattered.”
“Hangtown” is refreshingly gritty stuff. Be sure to hydrate for it. Aguilar says his mission as a filmmaker is to create fresh narratives told through the eyes of Chicano characters who challenge the status quo through personal growth. “I want young Chicanos to understand that we are Indigenous people who have the right to live, work, and thrive in our homeland. We no longer have to see ourselves through a Eurocentric lens or define ourselves through an American construct. “Hangtown” is the film I needed as a boy, and the one I’m proud to share now.”
Chicano is the hyphen between Mexican and American. – David Aguilar
David calls himself Chicano because, like himself, the word is a combination of Mexican and American. He says Mexican American is a term of assimilation and fits first generation Americans. But Chicano is the in-between state in which he exists where the lines are blurred. More than that, it is a point of cultural pride, a point of resistance. “Terms like Latino and Latinx erase our indigenous heritage, that’s why I embrace the term Chicano.”
I remember first hearing “Chicano” during the Caesar Chavez resistance in the 60s, but David tells me it started before that, during the time of the Zoot Suitors in the 1940s. “We were Chicanos before this was the United States. We will be Chicanos after it’s gone.” Aguilar says Chicanos are the least portrayed ethnic group in the media and yet they go to the movies and stream more than any other group. “If I could have seen a movie like “Hangtown” when I was 12, it would have showed me that I have a place, that I have this power to make films inside me.”
If “Hangtown” is about the moment a child first recognizes injustice, the next film in the festival explores what happens years later, when those early wounds return in unexpected ways.
“El Regreso del Miedo”
Director/Producer: Berenice Manzano Castro
In her directorial debut, Mexican American filmmaker Berenice Manzano Castro explores the emotional and psychological legacy of fear within immigrant and first-generation communities. “El Regreso del Miedo” (Return of Fear) The film examines how fear can shape identity and how confronting it can become an act of liberation. Manzano Castro’s film brings an intimate, first-generation perspective to themes of belonging, healing, and reclaiming one’s narrative.
The “Regreso de Miedo” trailer opens and closes with “It’s okay to be scared.” Castro says the film focuses on first generation fears and seeks to bring them comfort because “first generation folks are the most likely to be the most confused and terrified.” Castro says, “It’s okay to be scared, because without fear, you can’t be brave.”
The soundtrack includes ghostly music, at times underscored by a heartbeat as a poster appears with the written message, “Ya no estamos aqui” (We are no longer here.) Surrealistic images flash and melt with horror film intensity. The teenage protagonist Luis holds an older worker who appears to be dying. TV screens list warnings to “Beware of illegal aliens”. Screens are held by dark colored hands with long, sharp, fingernails, evoking vampiresque terror. The fingers reach for a little boy hiding under a table.
Berenice identifies as a Mexican American filmmaker. “I think for me, because I’m first generation, I’m very in tune with the culture that my parents grew up with. And so, I feel more into tune with that kind of culture, from Mexico. Some people are second, third generation, so they feel more comfortable with calling themselves Chicanos. It depends on case-by-case basis. For me, it’s just that connection I have with Mexican culture and my parents, so that’s why I consider myself Mexican American.”
Castro says she wrote the project in the summer of 2024 and then filmed it that November. “But obviously, I had no idea this was all going to be even more symbolic and impactful with our current age. I was more thinking in terms of the main actor, Luis, who he’s experiencing these dreams or visions of his past and revisiting them. He’s returning to that state of fear.” Fear is not the end of the story. The final step is deciding who we become in spite of it. This film was supported by the WFF Cine Se Puede initiative to help emerging filmmakers to advance their careers.
“Libertad” (Freedom)
A film about transgender asylum seeker Alejandra Daniela
by Director Brenda Avila–Hanna
WFF Director Consuelo Alba says, “One of the films we’re bringing back after a recent world premiere screening in New York is “Libertad”. It’s the story of a transgender woman from Santa Cruz.”
What strikes me about the films I’ve watched from this year’s WFF is they show us how Indigenous people know who they are (and when they don’t) and how comfortable they are in their own skin, even as they are persecuted for its color.
Hearing the protagonist Alejandra Daniela speak in “Libertad,” you get loud and clear that this soft-spoken woman knows who she is. She is comfortable. She is beautiful. She opens her movie’s trailer by saying, “I am not a line in a paper you can erase. Being transgender is part of my soul, it’s part of my heart. I am Oaxacan, indigenous; those are things you cannot erase.”
Director Brenda Avila-Hanna, “It’s definitely a unifying theme; we know who we are, right? As immigrants, we know very well who we are, who are neighbors are. I think that’s part of that awkward but heartbreaking feeling of constantly having to be defined by others’ opinion and approval and perception.”
“Libertad”, made in Watsonville, Santa Cruz and Oaxaca, is a moving drama that follows a young, transgender Latina navigating the tension between family loyalty and personal independence as she seeks asylum in the U.S. Blending intimate storytelling with a sharp social edge, “Libertad” explores how freedom is never abstract, it is negotiated in kitchens and workplaces, in whispered conversations, and in the quiet decisions that can change a life.
Avila-Hanna says that Alejandra Daniela wanted to bring trans healthcare to more people and educate everybody because “trans people can have different medical needs, that have nothing to do with being trans. And sometimes if the hospital receptionist looks at you in a certain way, where people address you in a way that can be hurtful, you might not feel safe. A lot of trans patients feel very unwelcome and just walk away. They miss important things because they’re afraid.”
Taken together, “Hangtown,” “El Regreso del Miedo”, and “Libertad” feel less like separate films and more like a three-part meditation on migration and freedom: a boy discovers courage before he understands history, a woman returns to the trauma she thought distance could erase, and a trans woman asks what happens after survival. The progression mirrors the lived experience of many communities in California: fear, reckoning, and finally, the radical act of self-definition.
Other feature films also capture the theme of Art As Resistance: “Asco: Without Permission” is about a Chicano avant-garde collective in LA in 70s. There is also “Following Harry” (Belafonte). Consuelo Alba tells me they have been in major festivals and you can see synopsis and trailers at https://watsonvillefilmfest.org.
The WFF Grows!
Director Consuelo Alba tells me that when the WFF began in 2012 there were few films made locally. “There were very few, and now every year we see more and more local films, and we’re very proud to present these films to their community.”
The WFF survived the pandemic; two weeks after they cancelled the 2020 Festival, they were screening the movies online. After the Pajaro flood they had to cancel part of the festival but adapted and had a smaller program at the library. Every year WFF also brings award-winning films and gems from big festivals like South By Southwest, Tribeca, Sundance, Los Angeles and San Francisco Latino Film Fest.
“A Festival is not just about watching films, it’s about building community and it’s about connecting with filmmakers, asking, learning from each other, as artists and as an audience.” Her goal is to humanize their community, to be proud and celebrate with joy who they are. The festival gives her more energy to say, “I’m not going to give up to fear and terror. This is the moment to stand up. I’m not going to be fighting on the streets. I’m going to do it through my work, bringing love and unity, and sanity through film. Creating these spaces for everyone to connect and be welcome in a space of sanity and joy and beauty.”
The Watsonville Film Festival reminds us that resistance does not always look like protest. The most powerful political act may simply be telling the truth about how we live. You may go to the Watsonville Film Festival with a heavy heart, but you’ll leave with a fuller one.
The Watsonville Film Festival runs March 12-21. Information and schedule at watsonvillefilmfest.org
