The Cinema Tropical Awards recognize the best Latin American and American Latin films of the year. Awards categories include: Best Film, Best Non-Fiction Film, Best Director, and Best First Film. Cinema Tropical is one of America’s leading Latin film promoters.
The Awards are important because the Cinema Tropical jury is watching movies that most of us won’t see at our local theater or on streaming. Film is an art that is very influenced by the present moment. Even historical films are made through the lens of the present. International films say a lot about the cultures that made them. No matter which side you are on, we are all going through the same things.
16th Cinema Tropical Awards 2026
16th Cinema Tropical Awards 2026 Latin American nominations will be announced on Thursday, December 18, 2025. “Best U.S. Latinx Film” nominations will be announced on Friday, December 19, 2025. 🇦🇷 🇧🇷 🇨🇱 🇨🇴 🇨🇺 🇩🇴 🇪🇨 🇲🇽 🇵🇦 🇵🇾 🇵🇪 🇻🇪 🇺🇸
This year’s nominations include films from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Venezuela, and the United States.
16th Cinema Tropical Awards 2026 ceremony announced winners at Film at Lincoln Center in Manhattan; on Wednesday, January 7, 2026. 🇧🇷 🇩🇴 🇨🇺 🇲🇽
Winners
Best Film
SUGAR ISLAND (2024), Johanné Gómez Terrero, Dominican Republic 🇩🇴
This film speaks to many real problems in the Dominican Republic (a land I love because my family is Afro-Indigenous-Euro Dominican and I live two days walk from Haiti). It’s a wonderful land of contrasts: a rich country with tremendous poverty, a modern country where very old ways of life remain in the barrios and the countryside, a macho culture where women have to be strong to survive, and a country with great universities but a very weak public education system. It’s a country where the Christian church holds power, but the people hold on to traditional faiths which are a blend of African, Indigenous, and Christian traditions.
The Indigenous Taino island of Hispaniola/Ayití/Quisqueya was divided by colonizers into Kreyòl-speaking Vodou Ayití and Spanish-speaking Christian Quisqueya, with tragic consequences for everyone even today, 500 years later. The tension between Haitians and Dominicans is constant and intense, even though many Dominicans have some Haitian heritage. It’s so intense that you can’t really talk about it with most Dominicans because they get angry and won’t stop yelling at you. If you speak heartfully with Haitian Dominicans, you will feel their pain. It’s a complex problem with no easy solutions.
This film is filled with powerful symbolism if you know how to read it. It is a coming-of-age story about Makenya, a Dominican Haitian teenager in a batey, which in the Dominican Republic is a barrio where Haitian cane workers live. Makenya gets pregnant without understanding how that happened. Sex is very much a part of life here, but Church influence generally blocks women from being educated about their bodies. Young men tell women that if you don’t have sex without a condom, I’ll go with someone else, so there are many early teen mothers. I’ve never seen so many babies and children. The lack of education hurts women the most.
As Makenya faces the transition into adulthood and motherhood, she runs into the challenge of being an undocumented Haitian descendent in the Dominican Republic. That makes it hard to receive education or health care and she is mostly alone in this journey. In most traditional cultures, the man pays for everything. But poverty makes that difficult or impossible for many young or working class men, so they abandon their children. The kids are raised in the extended family which is wonderful, but is also challenged by poverty, lack of education, lack of a contributing fatherly influence, and too many mouths to feed.
When faced with the challenges of life, many people turn to spirituality to find comfort and strength, and symbols are important in traditional spirituality. A snake crossing her path triggers Makenya’s spiritual awakening into the Mysteries of the 21 Divisiones, which is what Dominicans call the traditional Afro-Indigenous religion, also known as Palo by the locals, or Dominican Vudú by outsiders. There is nothing bad or scary about African Diasporic religions. They have been falsely demonized by other religions, uneducated people, and American soldiers who misrepresented the Vodou religion after the American Occupation of Haiti (1915-1934). For example, Zombies in modern movies are a misrepresentation of Nzambi, the Supreme God (Heavenly Father) in traditional Kongo spirituality.
The film’s title on the Trailer is designed in the style of veves, religious symbols drawn to connect with the divine. The Trailer opens with the rattle of a snake and symbol of a snake whose tail is a cross, above a tree. That’s the blend of Afro-Indigenous and Christian traditions in the universal Tree of Life. The tree could also represent the people reaching for their spirituality.
The snake is considered evil in Christian tradition because of the Garden of Eden story, but many cultures see the snake as a spiritual sign of healing power, like the snakes on the doctor symbol which derives from Ancient Greek tradition. In 21 Divisiones, the snake is a symbol of Damballah Wedo or Ayida Wedo. They are not the One Supreme God, Bondye or Dios, who is uninterested in worldly affairs, but one step below. In comparison to the Christian trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), Damballah and Ayida are the male and female aspects of the Son.
At 5 seconds in the Trailer, you see family advising Makenya to get her papers, learn English, get a job, and maybe get out of here. She is a child with no life experience beyond her home, so she doesn’t understand the pressure. Social mobility is very difficult in the Dominican Republic. Many young Dominicans dream of getting out and will marry a foreigner to do so. But if you are uneducated and undocumented, basically stateless, that is very difficult too.
At 29 seconds in the Trailer, you see the term “Marronage.” It’s a reference to Africans and African Descendants who escaped the horror of human slavery to the mountains and forests where they established their own free towns with their own traditions. Colonizers downplay the resistance, but it was constant and everywhere in the Colonial Americas.
At 53 seconds in the Trailer, you see Makenya’s head framed by a circle. That may be the circle of the Yowa or Dikenga Cross which represents the phases in the circle of life in Central Africa’s traditional Kongo culture. The center of the cross is you. It’s the same as the center of a Rose Window in a Christian church. The circle might also represent the divine crown as seen in many images of the Virgin Mary. Pregnant women have a beautiful aura around them. I just had surgery in a maternity clinic where the pregnant women and new mothers had this aura that made them exceptionally beautiful.
Here, the crown circle symbolizes Makenya’s spiritual awakening and transition into adulthood. As she struggles with her awakening, a farm foreman tells Makenya that though she has troubles, “trabajando te tú liberas” (by working you free yourself). That may be a reference to the sign on the main gate of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland “Arbeit macht frei” (work sets you free). It suggests that the life Makenya is about to enter is a life where she will be worked to death.
At 1:05 in the Trailer, Makenya looks at a herd of goats through a farm window. That has multiple meanings. She is being “scapegoated,” suffering punishment for something in which she is innocent. Some Christians see goats as a dark symbol of non-Christian traditions, but many traditions see goats in a positive light because they are tough survivors.
At about 1:20 in the Trailer, you see folk dancers in the Gagá tradition, a Haitian Dominican spring celebration which is largely suppressed now. I’ve been looking for Gagá for three years, but haven’t found it yet. Dominicans tell me, “we don’t do that here” like it is some terrible thing. It’s just a spring celebration like so many others around the world, including Christian Easter and Jewish Passover. All religions try to explain the same mysteries.
Then the snake appears in a ritual and someone sprinkles cane sugar on Makenya’s pajon (Afro hairstyle), perhaps symbolizing her fate as an African-descendent woman. She sees a snake among the cane, and then walks through the darkness towards the light. That may either symbolize Makenya’s spiritual awakening, or the long terrifying walk to the Door of No Return which led to a life of enslavement in the Americas from the colonial port in Ouidah, Benin, Africa. That door is still there. The life of the working poor, especially those who are stateless, is not much different from the hard life in Colonial Times.
It’s important that the director, Johanné Gómez Terrero, is a Dominican woman.
Iroko “Kíko” Keith ~ How “Sugar Island” Resonates in Me
I really want to see the entire movie. The Trailer alone really triggered me. I had a similar spiritual awakening when I left New York City for Puerto Rico. It started on my last day in New York through the influence of one of Colombia’s leading tomb raiders (Indigenous art dealer), an African Queen who was one of the world’s great tomb raiders (art collector), a Cuban Yoruba drummer, and a Cuban actress. I didn’t know much about African Diasporic religions (though I surprising knew a little), but as I have studied them, I noticed that my life often changes drastically on or around saint’s days, or when I directly engage the Orishas. I don’t trust any formal religion (religion is a business), but have had way too many mysterious coincidences with the Yoruba Orishas to deny them.
On my first week in Puerto Rico, I asked Yemayá, the great mother of the sea, if I should stay in my beach apartment, and ran to the sea to receive her answer. The second I touched the water, I tore my Achilles tendon, and couldn’t walk or leave Puerto Rico for a year. I interpreted Yemayá’s answer as no, but it was actually a yes. She kept me on the island where I could receive her blessings, and kept me safe during the pandemic. She gave me a corazón Boricua (Puerto Rican heart).
When I asked my Cuban actress mentor why these things keep happening to me, she said it’s probably been happening all your life. That floored me because I remembered things from my childhood, family heritage, and life’s journey. The Yoruba Orishas have been around my entire life. I just didn’t have the context to understand. I’m learning to love and respect the forces of nature.
When I first heard about Palo around San Miguel’s feast in the Dominican Republic, I went looking for a celebration because I thought it would be like the beautiful bomba puertorriqueña drum, song, and dance tradition, which I studied in Puerto Rico with Calle 13’s percussionist. They are both similar and different. In the Dominican Republic, San Miguel (Archangel Saint Michael) is an icon of 21 Divisiones. In the cities, Christians think of Jesus. In the barrios, many Christians think of San Miguel. Within a week of looking for him, I fell in love at first sight with a woman who gave me the strongest sensation that she was my family. So I now have an Afro-Indigenous Dominican Taína wife and children. Her family’s poverty, lack of education, and fatherly influence has made it much harder than I expected, but provides a small window into the lives of Dominican women and poor Dominicans, which has enriched my life greatly.
Best Director
BABY, Marcelo Caetano, Brazil 🇧🇷
Best Documentary
CHRONICLES OF THE ABSURD, Miguel Coyula, Cuba
The film’s title is an astute commentary all by itself. In the Latin world, life is filled with absurd, even surreal contrasts. Nothing works because political and business leaders steal everything, yet somehow the people make a life together. This isn’t only true in Cuba. It’s happening all over the world now.
Listen to the Director describe the conceptual foundation of his film: “I think it’s the duty of artists to be critical of dysfunctional governments anywhere in the world, regardless of ideology.”
Best First Film
THE DEVIL SMOKES (and saves the burnt matches in the same box), Ernesto Martínez Bucio, Mexico 🇲🇽
Best U.S. Latinx
ASCO: WITHOUT PERMISSION, Travis Gutiérrez Senger 🇺🇸
This is a documentary about ASCO, a Chicano (Mexican American) art collective that produces performance art, photography, murals, and theatre in East Los Angeles, a famed Mexican American community. (I grew up across the street from East LA. My parents never told me. I found out when I got lost, got off the freeway, and found myself on my childhood streets.) This is a story of free expression of your own identity because it’s yours. I’ve been following artists’ careers for almost 20 years. Many artists do their thing, but nothing spectacular, until they embrace their own identity. That embrace turns them into superstars.
Special Mention, U.S. Latinx Film
MAD BILLS TO PAY (OR DESTINY, DILE QUE NO SOY MALO), Joel Alfonso Vargas 🇺🇸
This is an Orchard Beach, The Bronx story.