It Runs In The Family
Lo que se hereda

Winner of the 2022 YOUTH JURY AWARD FOR BEST NEW DIRECTOR

View IN-PERSON at The Cinematheque: Saturday, Aug 27, 4:45pm

View ONLINE (from anywhere in Canada): August 25 – September 4 (extended to September 11!!)

*Geo-blocked for viewing in Canada only.

In this creative and compelling documentary, filmmaker Victoria Linares traces the life of her cousin Oscar Torres — a trailblazing Dominican filmmaker who, during the vicious dictatorship of Trujillo, fled to Cuba to make powerful socialist films and, who is most crucially, a fellow queer person in the family. Torres’ story was largely erased from the family archive, which sets Victoria on a journey of self-discovery and historical excavation by unearthing memories and staging re-enactments of her cousin’s unproduced screenplays. Linares weaves together expressive sequences with immense skill, piecing together an extraordinary portrait of Torres’ creative and political legacy, as she begins to re-evaluate her own past and place in her family.

Memory is the dominant theme in a film that, though lighthearted, deals with heavy topics of generational secrecy, queer erasure, politics and more. Villegas’ quest to rediscover Torres through her family’s memories of him feels like a way to ensure she herself is not forgotten in the same way. – Emily Leiker, VOX Magazine

Una revelación sobre Oscar Torres, su primo cineasta queer desconocido y una vez mundialmente famoso, lleva a Victoria por un camino de autodescubrimiento a través de reconstrucciones de sus recuerdos íntimos viviendo en el Caribe autoritario de la década de 1950, mientras Victoria dirige recreaciones de sus guiones no producidos con la familia que lo borró.

VICTORIA LINARES VILLEGAS
Is a queer filmmaker based in the Dominican Republic. She studied film production at the New School. Her shorts have screened at New Orleans Film Festival, Atlanta Film Festival, Shorts México and AMOR Festival Internacional de Cine LGBT+ where she won the Audience Award in 2019. Her latest short film My Mother Resents Me won an Honourable Mention at Milwaukee Underground Film Festival and Best Short Doc Jury Prize at Bushwick Film Festival (2019).

Her debut non fiction film It Runs in the Family has been in the official selection at True/False Film Fest, BFI Flare, BAFICI, OUTFEST LA, and the Guanajuato International Film Festival.