First Annual El Paso Film Festival This Weekend in Downtown El Paso

The first annual El Paso Film Festival started today and continues through Sunday.

The festival is being held at the Plaza Theatre, the Plaza’s Philanthropy Theatre, and the El Paso Museum of Art.
Five feature films and 43 short films are in the festival; all films are being judged and the audience has the opportunity to vote for their favorite.
Tickets may be purchased at the door of the venue.
Here are details on the five feature films being shown during the weekend:

Tejano – tonight at 7 at the Philanthropy Theatre at the Plaza Theatre, downtown
Tejano is directed by David Blue Garcia.
Desperate, Javi crosses into Mexico and contacts Lorena’s brother Adelio for help. Adelio, is a vain, unpredictable member of a rising cartel. he agrees to introduce Javi to the head of his cartel, Gloria. Gloria recruits Javi as a drug mule but tests his loyalty with one option: break his arm, wrap it in a cast made of cocaine and send him across the border to collect $10,000. Feeling like it is his only option, Javi agrees. As Javi makes his way back home the cartel is already on their way to meet him and his bedridden grandfather.

Time Trap – tonight at 9:45 at the Philanthropy Theatre at the Plaza Theatre, downtown
Time Trap is directed by Mark Dennis and Ben Foster.
A group of students venture into the deep caves of remote Texas to locate a favorite archaeology professor who inexplicably has gone missing while searching for the fountain of youth. In the course of their pursuit, the group unwittingly rappels into a break in the space-time continuum, where time passes much slower than on the surface. Upon returning to the surface, they discover thousands of years have passed, with all of humanity having evacuated earth for a new colony on Mars. With no hope for rescue, they descend further into the cave and uncover the most coveted urban legend in history and find themselves in the crossfire for its control.

Home + Away – Saturday at 6 pm at the Plaza Theatre
Home + Away is directed by Matt Ogens.
This is a story about the search for the American dream on the extreme edge of the nation. For the kids of El Paso’s Bowie High School, it’s a dream inspired by family, fueled by sports, and deeply complicated by the US/Mexican border – the fault-line between two worlds. Sports is at the heart of the film – for these kids it’s a way of building community and belonging, learning to overcome adversity, and build self-respect and confidence. Bowie High’s sports programs don’t have the resources of other schools – kids and coaches struggle to make ends meet, even paying out of pocket for equipment. Sports anchors the film, it’s both a core theme and a narrative through-line. It’s a way of visualizing the kids’ challenges and victories in an active, dynamic way. a way of bringing to life their spirit, their efforts to overcome the challenges they face – as the border’s many challenges threaten to disrupt this community. It’s through their experiences that we’ll begin to understand the precarious world of the borderland, and it’s through sports that we’ll see their hopes, their heartbreaks and their triumphs.

Run Like The Devil – Saturday at 9 pm at the Plaza Theatre
Run Like The Devil is directed by Dr. Steve Mims.
Run Like The Devil examines the surprisingly heated 2018 Cruz-O’Rourke Texas senate race and takes a revealing non-partisan deep dive into the stories of the candidates and their political parties during a period of historic national political tumult. Intimate campaign trail interviews with Cruz and O’Rourke interwoven with stories from political insiders including Mark McKinnon, Evan Smith and David Richards creates a vivid and entertaining (sometimes hysterical) document of a uniquely Texan political tale.

You Can’t Say No – Sunday at 2:30 at the El Paso Museum of Art.
You Can’t Say No is directed by Paul Kramer
After fourteen years, the fire that brought the fun-loving and formerly adventurous Hank Murphy (Hus Miller) and Alexandra ‘Alex’ Murphy (Marguerite Moreau) together has gone cold. Their home is for sale and the couple has fallen into an estranged and apathetic routine. They are getting divorced. desperate for inspiration, Hank takes off on a road trip to visit his eccentric father, Buck (Peter Fonda), in the wine country of Sonoma, California. Finally feeling a sense of freedom on the road, Hank meets Allison (Ingrid Vollset), whose wanderlust represents what Hank thinks has been missing from his life.

Short subject films will be showing Saturday from 1:30 to 3:30 and Sunday from 12:30 to 1:30 at the El Paso Museum of Art, downtown.