CineFest Latino Boston celebrates community

After months of prep, the first annual CineFest Latino Boston opens Wednesday.

For Founder/Executive Director Sabrina Avilés, CineFest is a place to shatter stereotypes and celebrate community. She has worked since March to book the 30 films – 15 shorts, 15 features — that comprise CineFest Latino Boston. Filmmakers from Mexico, Peru, Colombia and Brazil are represented.

“It’s a lot of logistics but as a filmmaker-producer,” Avilés said, “it’s about creating a cohesive presentation. This is technically our first festival; I’d forgotten how difficult it is with planning and logistics, almost like having a baby.

“In the long run, as difficult as it is, it’s so worthwhile because of the conversations that come up during the screenings.”

“La Pecera,’ directed by Glorimar Marrero Sánchez, opens the festival Wednesday night at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, co-presented by Ágora Cultural Architects.

“The film,” she said, “is a metaphor of the relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States. We talk about our relationship with the colonizer and I chose it first, because it’s a Puerto Rican film and we have a large Puerto Rican population in New England. And second, because we’re trying to look at who we are and not who colonized us.

“Puerto Rico and the U.S.,” she noted, “have a very controversial history. So this is a great jumping off point not only with those issues but a look at tolerance, resilience.

“There’s an aspect to the film itself that it’s a little sad. But there is hope and grace as well in how the main character accepts her predicament in life in an introspective, graceful way. Despite the negative outcome.”

Friday brings the Brazilian feature “Charcoal.” “That’s actually a thriller.  It’s where a family houses a foreign guest who happens to be an Argentinian drug lord. We see how he disrupts the family dynamic.

“The majority of films,” Avilés added, “we have someone for a Q&A, either live or via Zoom.”

On Oct. 1, at the Coolidge in partnership with the Roxbury International Film Festival, Ágora and CineFest co-present “Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project,” the Sundance Grand Prize winner. “Joe Brewster the director and his wife and co-director Michele Stephenson will be there for a Q&A moderated by Cristela Guerra of WBUR Arts & Culture.”

With only three fiction features, documentaries dominate but among the shorts, the reverse is true with only two documentaries among them.

CineFest wraps Oct. 1 but Ágora will co-present additional films with CineFest Latino Boston on Oct. 4 at the Boston City Hall Plaza. All screenings are free and open to the public.

CineFest Latino Boston opens Wednesday