Justice for My People
Films Festival 2025
Welcome to the justice for My People Film Festival 2025, where visionary BIPOC voices take center stage and stories become movements. Celebrating 10 years of championing storytellers who reimagine justice through film. Our films are intended for mature audiences, touching on significant themes in a trauma-informed manner. Parental discretion is advised.
Saturday, April 26th | PROGRAMMING
Block 1: 4:30 pm - 6:02 pm
Title: Kalli Nepantla
Year: 2024
Runtime: 17:54 min
Director(s): Textli Gallegos & Angel Gabriel Lizarraga
Logline: In Kalli Nepantla (The House of In-Between), a family of indigenous women living with challenging mental health realities is on the brink of collapse. When dinner goes wrong, Tlalli calls upon her grandma’s spirit to help preserve her family, while struggling to resist her own unwanted impulses. Based on lived experiences
Trigger/Content warning: self-harm ideation, eating disorders, mental health
Title: Chuck & Fern
Year: 2024
Runtime: 15:22 min
Writer/ Director: Henry Alexander Kelly
Logline:Within a fantasy video game, a heroic swordsman and a D-List villain, face an existential crisis but must push past it when a greater purpose calls.
Trigger/Content warning: Reference to Domestic Violence
Title: Harbor
Year: 2025
World Premiere
Runtime: 4:45
Director(s): Marlene Luna-Castañeda
Logline: A touching tribute to queer love explored through a seaside date.
Title: Consent Cafeteria
Year: 2025
World Premiere
Runtime: 3:20
Director(s): Desiree Marisol Carcamo
Logline: Sharing fries sparks a conversation among teens as they learn what consent is and is not.
Title: Xinachtli Music Video
Year: 2024
Runtime: 4:53
Director(s): Andy James Garcia
Logline: When a curious girl explores her yard, she discovers how beautiful her Abuelita's garden is.
Title: Bad Memory
Year: 2023
Runtime: 3:27
Writer/Director(s): Ang Cruz
Logline: Trapped in a corrupted video game, Ang gets attacked with fragments of a forgotten memory and can only escape if they confront their own inner demons.
Trigger/Content warning: Reference to Domestic Violence
Title: Native Plants Documentary
Year: 2024
Runtime: 5:41
Director(s): Nate Natalia Collin
Logline: What if we all converted our lawns into the natural habitat of Southern California? Youth cinema centering voices of QTBIPOC environmentalists and local farmers in Pacoima.
Title: Please Don’t Shoot
Year: 2025
World Premiere
Runtime: 4:30
Director(s): Evelyn Gonzalez
Logline: Navigating the harsh realities of a foreign land, an immigrant mother in the U.S. is unjustly targeted by the police while searching for a better life for her child, set to El Colectivo Sabinas’s powerful song “Please Don’t Shoot”.
Trigger/Content warning: Reference to Police Brutality
Title: Chimera
Year: 2024
Runtime: 18:00
Director(s): Kryzz Gautier
Logline: Haunted by the past, a brilliant tech-addicted developer faces an impossible dilemma: recreate her ex-girlfriend in virtual reality or hold onto the crumbling relationship with her current one.
Trigger/Content warning: Reference to mental health
Title: How We Win
Year: 2024
Runtime: 3:00
Director(s): Ronnie T. Clark
Logline: A thought-provoking look at self-discovery and victory.
PANEL 1: 6:00 PM
Remarks from Dolores Huerta: 6:30 PM
PA Graduation: 6:40 PM
Intermission: 6:50 PM
Block 2: 7:10 - 8:11 pm
Title: Flux
Year: 2025
Runtime: 17:38
Writer/Director(s): Aaron LaMarr Burleson
Logline: Trapped in an eerie, timeless void within his own home, a man confronts his past and future, ultimately discovering the key to breaking free from his purgatorial existence.
Title: Ochoch
Year: 2024
Runtime: 4:58
Director(s): Marlene Luna-Castañeda
Logline: Jacinto, an undocumented, gay, indigenous migrant worker, grapples with a series of setbacks that test his resilience, until finally seeking refuge with a local nonprofit fostering the opportunity for a better life.
Title: Vivir
Year: 2024
Runtime: 8:55
Writer/Director(s): Gerardo Maravilla
Logline: In her darkest moment, a despairing Latina artist crosses paths with a mysterious immortal.
Trigger/Content warning: Suicidal ideation
Title: Growing
Year: 2025
World Premiere
Runtime: 4:00
Director(s): Desiree Marisol Carcamo
Logline: Flowers learn how to communicate their needs in a healthy manner.
Title: Hatchlings trailer
Year: 2025
Runtime: 00:45
Director(s): Jahmil Eady
Logline: After her stepmother goes into labor, a resentful teenager is forced to babysit her turtle-obsessed half-brother; meanwhile, he dives into a vivid fantasy world where he is a sea turtle and she is a tortoise.
Title: Mi Ofrenda
Year: 2024
Runtime: 4:58
Director(s): Melba Martinez
Logline: Isabella, a depressed mother, goes through the difficult but cathartic process of coming to terms with the death of her own beloved father after finally beginning to grieve him properly with the support of Our House Grief Support Center.
Title: The Vibes are off : The 5D’s and signs of Abuse
Year: 2025
World Premiere
Runtime: 6:48
Director(s): Desiree Marisol Carcamo
Logline: What would you do in a given scenario where your friend is being harassed? Teens demonstrate how to intervene while putting safety first.
Title: Yola
Year: 2024
Runtime: 7:58
Director/Writer/Producer: Kristina Andrez & Alejandra Quiroz
Logline: Ahari, a Honduran DACA recipient, embarks on a vacation to Puerto Rico, only to be stranded in the Dominican Republic after an emergency landing. There, he meets Yamaris, a Dominican woman seeking a better life. As they fight to reach U.S. soil, their journey challenges Ahari’s identity, leading him to see his roots in a new light—some believe, by the will of the ancestral gods.
PANEL 2: 8:10 PM
SPECIAL ANNOUNCMENT: 8:30 PM
Block 3: 8:45PM – 9:12PM
Trokas Duras
Year: 2025
Runtime: 17:09
Director(s): Jazmin Garcia
Logline: A visual journey through the interior landscapes of a Jornalero’s dreams, his waking reality in L.A., and what it looks like when a group of people relegated to serving others labors for their own elevation of body and spirit. An homage to the unique, idiosyncratic, and customized old pick-up trucks driven by Latino day laborers and the intimacy that is cultivated in and around them.
Title: Voice Not Forgotten
Year: 2025
Runtime: 6:49
Director(s): Adriana Bautista
Logline: A displaced Eaton Fire survivor seeking refuge at the Red Cross’s shelter in the Pasadena Convention Center shares her testimony, as the shelter announces its doors are to close.