Award-winning films from the Sundance and Tribeca film festivals will headline the return of CineFestival San Antonio this week, but organizers say one of the festival’s biggest stories is happening much closer to home: a growing community of San Antonio filmmakers.
The 47th CineFestival San Antonio — the nation’s longest-running Latino film festival — runs July 9-12 at the Carver Community Cultural Center, featuring Chicano, Latino and Latin American films from across Texas, the United States and beyond.
This year’s festival pairs internationally recognized films with one of its largest showcases of local filmmaking, including 22 San Antonio-produced short films featured in the Vistas de San Antonio program, the festival’s largest local showcase to date.
The festival opens Thursday at 6:30 p.m. with the San Antonio premiere of Tribeca Film Festival Audience Award winner “MEXICANAMERICAN.” Director Eddie Sanchez’s documentary explores his parents’ migration from Mexico through family interviews and decades-old VHS home movies.
Closing the festival Sunday is 2026 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award winner “American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez.” Directed by Texas filmmaker David Alvarado, the documentary chronicles the life and legacy of playwright and filmmaker Luis Valdez, whose work helped bring Chicano stories into the American cultural mainstream through productions such as “Zoot Suit” and “La Bamba.”
Between the award-winning films, audiences will find documentaries exploring Tejano history, Chicano music and Texas culture, youth films and dozens of short films from emerging filmmakers.
More than half of this year’s screenings are free, though attendees must reserve tickets in advance. Festival organizers are also offering $40 all-access passes that include admission to every screening, while individual tickets are available through the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center.
A complete festival schedule, ticket information and reservations for free screenings can be viewed online. Screenings will take place throughout the four-day festival at the Carver Community Cultural Center at 226 N. Hackberry St.
More than a film festival
While CineFestival has long brought Latino and Latin American films to San Antonio, Program Director Eugenio del Bosque said the festival has increasingly become a place to showcase the city’s own filmmakers and help cultivate the next generation of storytellers.
This year’s Mesquite Awards — the festival’s annual competition recognizing some of the best Texas-produced short films from the past two years — includes eight San Antonio-made films, the most local nominees CineFestival has featured. Overall, the festival received 33 submissions from San Antonio filmmakers this year, though not all could be programmed.
Del Bosque said the numbers tell only part of the story. Filmmakers are increasingly returning with new projects while appearing on one another’s productions, sharing crews and building a collaborative creative community.
“We can see the progression,” he said. “I think a few years back that was not as noticeable as it is this year. People are collaborating, they’re talking to each other, they know each other’s work … it’s all favors, friends and family.”
He credits that growth to a combination of expanding university film programs, nonprofit media organizations, city arts grants and support from the San Antonio Film Commission. Just as importantly, he said, more filmmakers are choosing to remain in San Antonio rather than leaving for larger film markets.
“We have heard it firsthand,” del Bosque said. “They tell us, ‘We want to tell our own stories on our own terms, and we don’t want to have to go to either coast.’”
Since refocusing the festival in 2017 to place a greater emphasis on Texas and San Antonio filmmakers, del Bosque said CineFestival has watched many of the same directors return with new work while helping introduce emerging voices to local audiences.
“I truly believe a lot of these folks are going to be the same people making the feature films of the future,” he said.
For filmmaker Teresa Garza, that opportunity has helped shape her own journey behind the camera.
Originally from Mexico, Garza spent years working as a television news anchor in San Antonio and Los Angeles before returning to San Antonio in 2018 to pursue filmmaking. Drawing on her background in journalism, her science-fiction short “Before They Forget” explores family separation, memory and resilience through the story of a mother who is granted one annual reunion with a digital simulation of her child.
This year marks her third consecutive appearance at CineFestival and her first Mesquite Award nomination.
Garza said she’s seen the local filmmaking community become noticeably more active over the past several years, particularly as more Latina women have stepped behind the camera.
“We have a voice now, where we can write stories, we can direct,” she said. “It means a lot and CineFestival is kind of like my family.”
Beyond the expanded representation Garza has seen a growing number of films being produced across the city.
“San Antonio is an awesome place to grow,” she said. “ Every week I learn about a new production that people are working on, it’s amazing that the CineFestival is supporting this effort.”
For Garza, the value of CineFestival extends beyond awards or recognition. The festival gives local filmmakers a chance to connect with audiences in a way streaming or online releases often cannot.
“It’s more than the awards, for me, it’s that more people can see my message … it’s something that’s priceless,” she said. “When you receive feedback and you see somebody laughing or crying or reacting to your work, that’s something that stays with you.”
Del Bosque says he hopes audiences leave with a new appreciation for both the films and the local artists behind them.
“CineFestival is something that is for everybody,” he said. “I hope people leave refreshed, with an idea of the variety of artists that are working both in San Antonio and around Texas and the rest of the United States and with a fresh outlook on going to see movies in a theatrical setting.”