Milly, the movie opens the Global Film Festival this Wednesday

Santo Domingo, RD – The Santo Domingo Global Film Festival opens this Wednesday, January 28, at the Eduardo Brito National Theater, beginning its eighteenth edition, which will be held from January 28 to February 4, 2026, with a wide and diverse international program. The opening night will include the world premiere of the film Milly, the queen of merengue, directed by Leticia Tonos, in the main hall of the National Theater. The Santo Domingo Global Film Festival (FCGSD) reaffirms in this edition its international vocation and its commitment to cinema as a tool for cultural reflection, historical memory and dialogue between nations.

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This edition will feature the renowned Dominican-American writer Julia Álvarez and will include the world premiere of Milly, the queen of merengue as the opening act.
Omar de la Cruz, executive director of the festival, highlighted that this edition, which coincides with the culmination of FUNGLODE’s 25th anniversary and marks the beginning of the road to the two decades of the FCGSD, which will be fully celebrated in January 2028.

Omar de la Cruz highlighted the role of Caribbean Cinemas, a company with which a strategic alliance was established last year, with the aim that the public, guests and protagonists enjoy an attractive and quality programming.
Julia Álvarez, outstanding participation
The director of the FCGSD informed that the festival will have the special participation of Julia Álvarez, one of the most influential literary voices of the Latin American diaspora. Her agenda includes an institutional visit to FUNGLODE and the screening of the documentary Julia Álvarez: a reimagined life, accompanied by a discussion that will address her childhood in Santo Domingo, exile, her work and her legacy, with emphasis on issues such as identity, memory and cultural belonging.
The presentation of the documentary Julia Álvarez: A Life Reimagined is made with the collaboration of La Nave Post Lab and will have its screening on January 30 in the Caribbean Cinemas theaters of Galería 360.
Julia Álvarez: a reimagined life is a documentary about the life and work of one of the most celebrated and influential Latin writers in America. The film was released in September 2024 on PBS, pbs.org/americanmasters and the PBS App application, in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month.

Produced and directed by Adriana Bosch, Julia Álvarez: A Life Reimagined includes extensive interviews with Álvarez, her family, and prominent contemporary literary figures. The documentary film is part of the Global Film Festival’s lineup and is a collaboration of La Nave Post Lab, a film company directed by producers Omar Hasbún and Tita Hasbún. The screening will feature the special presence of the renowned writer Julia Álvarez, along with filmmaker Adriana Bosch.
Opening Night and Tributes – The film Milly, the queen of merengue, directed by Leticia Tonos, will be the opening work of the festival, with a world premiere in the main hall of the Eduardo Brito National Theater. The musical narrates the life of Milly Quezada, who emigrated as a young woman to the United States to escape the Dominican civil war and found in music a path of personal and cultural affirmation in Washington Heights in the seventies.

The film combines a portrait of her artistic career with her intimate history, addressing memory, identity, and resilience. In this same inaugural act, the festival will pay tribute to Cecilia García, for her career in theater, film, and music, and to Milly Quezada, for her sustained contribution to the international projection of merengue. During the opening night, the short film Platanero, directed by Juan Frank Hernández, selected for the 2025 Sundance Festival, will also be screened. The work offers a critical and ironic look at identity and migration, and is the result of a collaboration between the Dominican Republic and Canada. Hungary, guest of honor
In this edition, Hungary will be the guest of honor. The exhibition will include classic and contemporary works of Hungarian cinema, reaffirming the FCGSD’s commitment to cultural exchange between Europe and the Caribbean.
Recognitions
The festival will pay tribute to personalities whose work has marked cinema, culture and international cooperation, including José Rafael Lantigua, Agliberto Meléndez, René Fortunato, Cecilia García, Milly Quezada, Brigitte Veyne and Robert Carrady, president of Caribbean Cinemas, who will receive the Camilo Carrau 2026 Award.

Training, Industry and Competencies– The 2026 edition incorporates the international course “Thinking the work in product terms: development marketing and commercial strategy”, taught by ESCAC in alliance with FUNGLODE, IGLOBAL and DGCINE. The festival will also feature six international competitions in the areas of first feature, animation, documentary and short film.

International Diplomatic Presence– The Santo Domingo Global Film Festival 2026 will feature the participation of Robin S. Bernstein, former United States Ambassador to the Dominican Republic. Bernstein will participate in the screening of the documentary They Called Us Trujillo’s Jews, followed by a discussion open to the public at Gallery 360.
The festival will conclude on Wednesday, February 4th, with the official closing ceremony.

About Julia Álvarez
Dominican-American poet and novelist Julia Álvarez emerged on the literary scene in the 90s and paved the way for an entire generation of Latino authors. Her semi-autobiographical novel How the García Girls Lost Their Accents was published in 1991, followed by In the Time of the Butterflies in 1994, a work that sold more than a million copies and made the atrocities committed by the regime of dictator Rafael Trujillo known to the world.

Álvarez’s work spans multiple genres and audiences. It includes three non-fiction books, three collections of poems, eleven books for children and young adults, and seven literary novels. This new documentary reveals her extraordinary journey from her childhood in the Dominican Republic, her life in exile in New York City, and her brilliant literary career, which shows no signs of stopping. Recently, at 74 years old, she published the acclaimed novel The Cemetery of Untold Stories.

“We are delighted that, together with the producer of the documentary Adriana Bosch, we can present at the FCGSD 2026 the story of one of the most influential Latin writers of our time. Álvarez’s poetry and novels offer a unique perspective on the mixture of her two cultures, American and Dominican, and are among the best works that have been written about the experience of Latino immigrants in the United States”, commented Adriana Bosch.

The filmmaker added: “In our film, Dominican poet Elizabeth Acevedo introduces Julia by saying that Álvarez deserves to be on the Mount Rushmore of Latina writers, alongside Isabel Allende and Sandra Cisneros. She pioneered the creation of a new literature that has reinvented the concept of mainstream in American culture and reminds us of Langston Hughes’ famous quote: ‘I, too, sing America’.”

About Adriana Bosch
Adriana Bosch is an independent documentary filmmaker with over 40 years of experience. She was a producer of the series Latino Americans (2013) and Latin Music USA (2009) for PBS. She has produced and written several films for the American Experience series, including Reagan, Jimmy Carter, IKE, and Ulysses S. Grant.

Also produced and wrote documentaries about the Rockefeller family, Fidel Castro, the Cuban scientist Carlos Finlay, American Comandante, about the American mercenary William Morgan, and Letters to Eloisa, about the Cuban writer José Lezama Lima. Her works have received two Peabody Awards, an Emmy, a Silver Hugo, and an Erik Barnouw Award. Born in Cuba, Bosch holds a doctorate in International Affairs from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.