The San Luis Obispo International Film Festival has given SLO Review the opportunity to preview some of the narrative and documentary films on the festival’s April 24-29, 2025 program schedule. Follow the links to purchase tickets to see these notable films for yourself.
Digging Deep To Find Courage
The world is a dangerous place, even for those with courage.
In the Mexican film Corina (directed by Urzula Barba), the twenty-year-old title character (Naian González Norvind) never ventures outside the four-block radius where she lives. Traumatized by her father’s untimely death in a car accident, she is largely mute. Her days consist of cautiously stepping out of her apartment to go to the local bodega. There she orders her usual: coffee with whole milk and two scoops of brown sugar.
Then she continues on to her office in a newspaper warehouse, where she is a lowly style corrector at a failing publishing house. We soon come to understand that Corina is a style corrector in her own life, creating for herself a storyline with little resemblance to her contracted reality.
Through no fault of her own, Corina is drawn into her publisher’s dilemma: its latest offering is from their one successful author, Xareni Silverman, whose readers are depending upon a happy ending. But Silverman is in no mood to comply, claiming artistic privilege. The publisher is in a panic and threatens the author to no avail.
This film is thoughtful and brave, raising questions about how art functions in the world and how we define ourselves.”
All the while, Corina silently wonders: Is it possible to give a tragic story a happy ending?
“We are so much more than the language we use to describe ourselves,” says Corina’s mother Renee. She and Corina are desperately trying to convince themselves that their small life is a courageous one. We are not persuaded, but then Corina is caught in a deception, and she must dig deep to find the real courage that has eluded her.
The film is reminiscent of the popular cult movie Amélie with its third-person voice-over and Corina’s physicality, her boots, and her French bob haircut. The beginning of the film makes for a slow start, but soon we are engaged in a story that is both comedic and seriously philosophical. Its tongue-in-cheek style helps to soften the blow of this girl’s solitary, tragic life.
Despite Corina’s near silence, she has a strong presence on the screen and we can’t help but feel her pain.
Happy ending or not (no spoiler alert here), this film is thoughtful and brave, raising questions about how art functions in the world and how we define ourselves.
While Corina’s fears are extreme, it is impossible to ignore our own anxieties about living in an increasingly dangerous world that daily requires courage.
Editor’s Note: Screenings of Corina (Mexico, run time 98 minutes, rated PG, in Spanish with English subtitles, West Coast Premiere) at the SLO International Film Festival are sponsored by Latino Outreach Council and Frederick Law Firm.