Latin American Film Festival: "Carajita" (2021, Dominican Republic)

Description

The 2024 Latin American Film Festival continues with Carajita, a 2021 film from the Dominican Republic. The film is in Spanish with English subtitles.

Featuring striking cinematography and outstanding performances, Carajita (which means "annoying child") explores the tenuous relationship that exists between race, class, and family. Sarah, the pampered daughter of a corrupt oligarch whose family recently relocated to Las Terrenas, thinks of her Black Dominican nanny, Yarisa, as "part of the family." The two have a "mother-daughter-like" relationship that transcends their social standing. That illusion is put to the test when Yarisa's spirited daughter Mallory goes missing, challenging Sarah's naive beliefs. Boasting intuitive storytelling and confident direction, Carajita plays like a psychological thriller, deriving oppressive tension from unspoken inequalities and the impunity of privilege.

The 2024 Latin American Film Festival is hosted by the Program in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies and co-sponsored by the Aronson Center for International Studies, the Center for Advanced Media Studies, and the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures.