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| Esta Isla | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Lorraine Jones Molina Cristian Carretero |
| Written by | Cristian Carretero Lorraine Jones Molina Kisha Tikina Burgos |
| Produced by | Lorraine Jones Molina Cristian Carretero |
| Starring | Zion Ortiz Fabiola Brown Xavier Antonio Morales Teófilo Torres Audicio Robles Georgina Borri |
| Cinematography | Cedric Cheung-Lau |
| Edited by | Cristian Carretero Andrei Nemcik |
| Music by | Alain Emile |
Production company | Experimento Lúdico |
| Distributed by | Tribeca Films / Giant Pictures (United States) |
Running time | 114 minutes |
| Country | Puerto Rico |
| Language | Spanish |
Esta Isla (English: This Island) is a 2025 Puerto Rican Spanish-language drama and coming-of-age film directed and produced by Lorraine Jones Molina and Cristian Carretero, from a screenplay by Carretero, Jones Molina and Kisha Tikina Burgos. The film stars Zion Ortiz as Bebo and Fabiola Brown as Lola, two young people from different social classes who flee from Puerto Rico's coast into the island's mountainous interior after a violent incident.[1]
The film is the first narrative feature directed by Jones Molina and Carretero. It expands on Experimento Ludico's 2014 short film of the same title and combines elements of a lovers-on-the-run story, road movie, crime drama and coming-of-age film with observations of Puerto Rican class divisions, colonial history, migration, economic precarity and cultural identity.[2][3]
Esta Isla had its world premiere in the U.S. Narrative Competition at the 2025 Tribeca Festival, where Jones Molina and Carretero received the Best New Narrative Director Award. Cinematographer Cedric Cheung-Lau won Best Cinematography in a U.S. Narrative Feature, and the film received a Special Jury Mention for Best U.S. Narrative Feature.[4] In 2026 it won the Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award, presented to a feature made for under US$1 million. The Los Angeles Times described it as the first Puerto Rican film to win an Independent Spirit Award.[5][2]
Plot
[edit]Bebo lives with his older brother Charlie in a public housing complex in a coastal Puerto Rican town. The brothers fish for a living, but declining economic prospects and the difficulty of surviving from their work push Charlie toward side jobs connected to the local drug economy. Bebo spends his time with friends and becomes involved with Lola, a young woman from a wealthier family whose home life and social position leave her dissatisfied.[1]
A dispute between Charlie and local drug dealer Moreno escalates into violence. After blood is spilled, Bebo becomes entangled in the consequences and leaves the coast with Lola. Their flight takes them away from the semi-urban coastal environment and into Puerto Rico's interior, where they encounter people and ways of life that are increasingly distant from the world in which they were raised.[6]
In the mountains, Bebo and Lola are taken in by Cora, a man connected to Lola's family history. The pair's time with Cora and other rural residents forces them to reconsider their assumptions about family, history, political memory and the island itself. As the danger following them draws closer, Bebo must decide whether to continue running or face the consequences of the choices that brought them there.[7]
Cast
[edit]- Zion Ortiz as Bebo
- Fabiola Brown as Lola
- Xavier Antonio Morales as Charlie
- Teófilo Torres as Cora
- Audicio Robles as Moreno
- Georgina Borri as Aida
- Sean Ortiz as Picu
- Omar Iloy as Cheo
- Jeniffe Frett as Angie
- Bryan Minaya as Pito[8]
Development and writing
[edit]Carretero first explored the premise in the 2014 short film Esta isla, which Jones Molina produced. According to Jones Molina, the short was conceived from the beginning as a way of developing a feature-length version of the story.[3] When the filmmakers expanded the material, they retained the central structure of young people moving through distinct Puerto Rican landscapes while broadening the story's social and historical dimensions.[6]
Jones Molina and Carretero cited the lovers-on-the-run tradition as one of the film's principal narrative influences. In interviews they referenced Terrence Malick's Badlands, Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde, and Alfonso Cuarón's Y tu mamá también, particularly the way road narratives can allow characters to encounter different communities while the audience encounters a country through them.[3] The filmmakers said they wanted the film to remain accessible as a drama while also functioning as a way of looking at Puerto Rico's geography, history and contemporary social realities.[3]
A conceptual influence came from Octavio Paz's The Labyrinth of Solitude. Carretero and Jones Molina told the Los Angeles Times that Paz's discussion of adolescence as a period of self-definition helped them build a parallel between the protagonists' coming-of-age and Puerto Rico's unresolved questions of political and cultural identity.[2] That idea is reflected in the title: Carretero has described the "island" as referring both to Puerto Rico and metaphorically to the individual, with the characters and the country both attempting to understand their relationship to their past and to the world around them.[3]
The screenplay also incorporated contemporary conditions in Puerto Rico. The filmmakers cited economic hardship, infrastructure failures, migration, gentrification, the effects of colonial history and the disruption caused by Hurricane Maria and subsequent crises as part of the reality from which the film developed.[2][9]
Production
[edit]The film was produced by Experimento Lúdico, the independent production company founded by Jones Molina and Carretero in Mayagüez in 2010. The filmmakers have said that part of the company's purpose was to create work from western Puerto Rico rather than treating the San Juan metropolitan area as the island's only center of film production.[2]
Principal photography took place largely in western Puerto Rico. Reporting around the film's Tribeca premiere identified Mayagüez as a principal location, with additional filming in municipalities including Las Marías, Cabo Rojo, Guayanilla, San Juan and Añasco.[10] The Puerto Rico Film Festival described the production as having been shot primarily in Mayagüez and neighboring western municipalities.[11]
Cedric Cheung-Lau served as director of photography, Gerardo Vega as production designer, Johannes Peters worked on sound, and Alain Emile composed the score. Carretero edited the film with Andrei Nemcik.[8] Cheung-Lau's cinematography later received awards at both Tribeca and the Puerto Rico Film Festival, while Vega's production design and Emile's score received awards at Cine Ceará in Brazil.[4][8]
One of the film's historically significant locations was a house associated with Puerto Rican independence activist Filiberto Ojeda Ríos. In the Los Angeles Times, the filmmakers explained that interior details visible in the film, including bullet marks, came from the actual house in which Ojeda Ríos was killed in 2005. The location is linked in the film to the character Cora and to Lola's family history.[2]
Style and themes
[edit]Jones Molina and Carretero have used the term "Tropical Realism" to describe both their aesthetic and their practical method of filmmaking. Carretero has said the approach means developing a cinematic language suited to Puerto Rico's realities rather than attempting to imitate larger industrial productions, with small crews, available resources and close engagement with communities forming part of the method.[2] Cinema Tropical described the film as an example of the filmmakers' use of cinema for social commentary while maintaining an intimate character-centered narrative.[3]
The film moves through different environments—coast, public housing, roads and mountains—and uses those changes in landscape to accompany changes in Bebo and Lola's understanding of the island. Critics noted the film's emphasis on material details of daily life, including fishing, housing, labor, water access and the economic pressures surrounding young Puerto Ricans.[12][7]
Class is a central organizing element of the story. Bebo comes from a public-housing community and Lola from a privileged household, but the film avoids treating either social position as a complete explanation of the characters. Jones Molina has said that the filmmakers wanted relationships in the film to resist simple moral divisions and to reflect forms of affection, resentment and obligation that coexist within Puerto Rican communities.[3]
The film also engages with Puerto Rico's colonial relationship with the United States. The directors have said that this theme is not presented as a didactic argument but is embedded in the characters' circumstances, memory and environment. The Los Angeles Times connected the film's treatment of political memory to Puerto Rican surveillance history, independence activism and the filmmakers' interest in how incomplete knowledge of history affects identity.[2] EFE similarly described the film as addressing the effects of narcotics trafficking and gun violence on young Puerto Ricans while placing those concerns within a broader social portrait.[13]
Festival screenings
[edit]Esta Isla premiered on June 7, 2025, as part of the U.S. Narrative Competition at the Tribeca Festival in New York.[10] Following Tribeca, the film screened in the Ibero-American competition at the Guadalajara International Film Festival and in competition at the Festival de Biarritz Amérique Latine, where it was presented as its European premiere.[8][14]
Its festival run also included the NVISION Latino Film & Music Festival in Miami, the Puerto Rico Film Festival, the AFI Latin American Film Festival, the New York Latino Film Festival, Cine Ceará in Brazil and the Chicago International Film Festival.[9][8] At the Puerto Rico Film Festival in Mayagüez, the film opened the festival at the Teatro Yagüez and later received awards for Best Puerto Rican Feature and Best Cinematography.[11][8]
In October 2025 the film competed in the Progressive Cinema section of the 20th Rome Film Fest. The festival's program described it as a raw and poetic coming-of-age story using noir elements to depict Puerto Rico's social contradictions.[15][6]
Theatrical and digital release
[edit]After its festival run and its Film Independent Spirit Awards recognition, Esta Isla opened theatrically in Puerto Rico on March 19, 2026, followed by a U.S. theatrical rollout beginning in New York and Miami on March 20. Cinema Tropical reported that the Puerto Rico opening included more than a dozen screens and that the U.S. release began at Village East by Angelika in New York before expanding to other cities.[16]
The film also played theatrically in Chicago and Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Times covered the Los Angeles engagement at the Lumiere Cinema at the Music Hall in Beverly Hills and noted the unusual circumstance of a Puerto Rican production receiving a theatrical release in Southern California close to its Puerto Rican opening.[17]
Tribeca Films, the distribution label associated with Tribeca Enterprises and Giant Pictures, acquired U.S. distribution rights and released the film digitally in August 2026.[2] The release was followed by a BoriCorridor screening tour organized with Puerto Rican cultural organizations in several U.S. cities, including locations in Colorado, New York, Connecticut, Texas and Massachusetts.[18]
Reception
[edit]Robert Daniels of RogerEbert.com gave the film 3.5 out of 4 stars, calling it visually evocative and emphasizing the way it pauses the forward momentum of a lovers-on-the-run narrative to make room for questions of colonialism, poverty, grief and community.[12]
Carlos Aguilar, reviewing the film for IndieWire, described it as a richly textured drama whose political concerns remain largely beneath the surface of the characters' emotional relationships and physical movement through Puerto Rico.[19]
Juanma Fernández París of El Nuevo Día characterized the film as a raw and poetic portrait of contemporary Puerto Rico, focusing on the relationship between the brothers and the moral choices faced by Bebo and Lola after the story's central act of violence.[7] A separate Los Angeles Times article by Sergio Burstein discussed the film's realism, its refusal of a tourist-oriented image of Puerto Rico and its simultaneous theatrical openings in Puerto Rico and several U.S. cities.[20]
Reviewing the film after its Rome screening, Martha Bird of Film Fest Report praised its combination of landscape, political context and emotional storytelling, describing the island itself as a major expressive element of the film.[21]
Accolades
[edit]| Year | Organization | Category | Recipient(s) | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Tribeca Festival | Best New Narrative Director | style="background: #9EFF9E; color: #000; vertical-align: middle; text-align: center; " class="yes table-yes2 notheme"|Won | |
| Best Cinematography in a U.S. Narrative Feature | style="background: #9EFF9E; color: #000; vertical-align: middle; text-align: center; " class="yes table-yes2 notheme"|Won | |||
| Special Jury Mention for Best U.S. Narrative Feature | style="background: #9EFF9E; color: #000; vertical-align: middle; text-align: center; " class="yes table-yes2 notheme"|Won | |||
| 2025 | NVISION Latino Film & Music Festival | Best U.S. Feature | style="background: #9EFF9E; color: #000; vertical-align: middle; text-align: center; " class="yes table-yes2 notheme"|Won | |
| 2025 | Puerto Rico Film Festival | Best Puerto Rican Feature | style="background: #9EFF9E; color: #000; vertical-align: middle; text-align: center; " class="yes table-yes2 notheme"|Won | |
| Best Cinematography | style="background: #9EFF9E; color: #000; vertical-align: middle; text-align: center; " class="yes table-yes2 notheme"|Won | |||
| 2025 | Cine Ceará | Best Art Direction | style="background: #9EFF9E; color: #000; vertical-align: middle; text-align: center; " class="yes table-yes2 notheme"|Won | |
| Best Original Score | style="background: #9EFF9E; color: #000; vertical-align: middle; text-align: center; " class="yes table-yes2 notheme"|Won | |||
| Best Film | style="background: #FFE3E3; color: black; vertical-align: middle; text-align: center; " class="no table-no2 notheme"|Nominated | |||
| 2025 | Guadalajara International Film Festival | Ibero-American Competition – Best Feature | style="background: #FFE3E3; color: black; vertical-align: middle; text-align: center; " class="no table-no2 notheme"|Nominated | |
| 2025 | Rome Film Fest | Progressive Cinema – Best Film | style="background: #FFE3E3; color: black; vertical-align: middle; text-align: center; " class="no table-no2 notheme"|Nominated | |
| 2026 | Film Independent Spirit Awards | John Cassavetes Award | style="background: #9EFF9E; color: #000; vertical-align: middle; text-align: center; " class="yes table-yes2 notheme"|Won |
References
[edit]- 1 2 "Esta Isla (This Island)". Tribeca Festival. Retrieved 19 September 2026.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Aguilar, Carlos (27 August 2026). "This Puerto Rican couple made history with their new anti-colonialist film, 'Esta Isla'". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 19 September 2026.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Marchese Gonzalez, Camilla (30 June 2025). "Creating Tropical Realism: Lorraine Jones Molina and Cristian Carretero on ESTA ISLA". Cinema Tropical. Retrieved 19 September 2026.
- 1 2 3 "2025 Tribeca Festival Announces Winners". Tribeca Festival. 12 June 2025. Retrieved 19 September 2026.
- 1 2 "2026 Spirit Awards Winners" (PDF). Film Independent. 15 February 2026. Retrieved 19 September 2026.
- 1 2 3 "Esta isla". Rome Film Fest. Retrieved 19 September 2026.
- 1 2 3 Fernández París, Juanma (19 March 2026). ""Esta isla": un retrato crudo y poético del Puerto Rico contemporáneo". El Nuevo Día. Retrieved 19 September 2026.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Esta isla". Habanero Film Sales. Retrieved 19 September 2026.
- 1 2 "Filmmaker Spotlight: Esta Isla with Lorraine Jones Molina & Cristian Carretero". Cinema/Chicago. 7 October 2025. Retrieved 19 September 2026.
- 1 2 "Película puertorriqueña "Esta isla" logra tres premios en el Festival de Tribeca en Nueva York". Metro Puerto Rico. 13 June 2025. Retrieved 19 September 2026.
- 1 2 ""Esta Isla" será la cinta de apertura del Puerto Rico Film Festival 2025". Metro Puerto Rico. 19 June 2025. Retrieved 19 September 2026.
- 1 2 Daniels, Robert (24 March 2026). "Esta Isla review: Puerto Rican drama drips with rich texture". RogerEbert.com. Retrieved 19 September 2026.
- ↑ Alaejos, Esther (28 February 2026). "'Esta Isla', filme independiente que plasma el impacto del narcotráfico en Puerto Rico". EFE. Retrieved 19 September 2026.
- ↑ "Esta isla". Festival de Biarritz Amérique Latine. Retrieved 19 September 2026.
- ↑ "The films of the 2025 Rome Film Fest". Fondazione Cinema per Roma. 19 September 2025. Retrieved 19 September 2026.
- ↑ "First Puerto Rican Film to Win a Spirit Award, ESTA ISLA Opens in U.S. Theaters". Cinema Tropical. 10 March 2026. Retrieved 19 September 2026.
- ↑ Burstein, Sergio (27 March 2026). "'Esta Isla', la premiada película que se sumerge de lleno en la realidad puertorriqueña, llega a Los Ángeles". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 19 September 2026.
- ↑ ""Esta isla" se presentará en nueve ciudades de Estados Unidos". El Nuevo Día. 20 August 2026. Retrieved 19 September 2026.
- ↑ Aguilar, Carlos (20 March 2026). "'Esta Isla' Review: Richly Textured Drama Wrestles with Puerto Rico's Troubles and Attributes from a Humanistic, On-the-Ground Perspective". IndieWire.
{{cite news}}:|access-date=requires|url=(help) - ↑ Burstein, Sergio (28 March 2026). "En 'Esta Isla', el encanto tiene un sabor mucho más crudo y realista". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 19 September 2026.
- ↑ Bird, Martha (26 October 2025). "Rome Film Festival 2025: Esta Isla (dirs. Lorraine Jones Molina & Cristian Carretero)". Film Fest Report. Retrieved 19 September 2026.
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