Bigger and better: Surveying the 2006 San Diego Latino Film Festival. California

“The San Diego Latino Film Festival (SDLFF) has grown tremendously since 1993, when Ethan van Thillo founded it as a way to showcase Latino student filmmakers. Today, it’s a platform for feature and documentary films from Latin America, Spain and the U.S. and this year will screen a record number 137 films in 11 days. Now the longest running Latino festival in Southern California, SDLFF attracts coveted celebrity appearances with 96 guests composed of actors, filmmakers and community leaders.

During the first incarnation of the festival in 1994, Van Thillo, who continues to be the festival’s steward and visionary, screened a short by a student filmmaker named Fernando Eimbcke. This year, van Thillo gets to show Eimbcke’s feature-length film Duck Season, recently picked up by Warner Independent for theatrical release. Van Thillo says it’s gratifying to have the festival serve as a kind of evolutionary chart for a filmmaker’s career. He exclaims, “Eimbcke’s short film was featured on the cover of our very first program, and now we’re screening his feature-length film.” Duck Season has won 11 Ariel Awards, Mexico’s version of the Oscars, and successfully screened at both Cannes and the Toronto Film Festival.”

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