Hispanic Film Festival Brings Cinema, Culture, and Experiential Learning to ISU

On September 30, Idaho State University inaugurated its 2025 Hispanic Film Festival with a welcome from President Robert W. Wagner, who emphasized the importance of cultural events that foster dialogue, language exchange, and community. Coinciding with European Languages Day and Hispanic Heritage Month, the festival ran for five weeks, from September 30 to November 4, offering audiences a powerful exploration of memory, identity, and storytelling through Hispanic cinema.

This year’s theme, “Memory Is Our Common Language,” framed the screenings as more than entertainment. Five award-winning films from across the Hispanic world invited audiences to reflect on history, cultural legacy, and shared human experiences. Graduate students in the Master of Arts in Spanish program introduced each film through short video presentations that highlighted key cinematic and thematic elements, underscoring the value of film as both an artistic expression and a cultural artifact of international relevance.

What sets the Hispanic Film Festival apart is its integration into the curriculum. Led by Dr. José Eduardo Villalobos Graillet, the festival functions as a graduate-level course in which students are not just attendees but active organizers. They coordinate logistics, record radio spots on KISU, and facilitate post-screening discussions. In doing so, they gain practical experience in event planning, public speaking, translation, and cross-cultural communication. The course exemplifies ISU’s commitment to experiential learning, combining academic study with hands-on engagement and preparing students for professional and civic life while deepening their cultural insight.

The festival also provided unique opportunities for direct dialogue with filmmakers. Mexican director Pierre Saint-Martin Castellanos joined virtually to discuss his award-winning 2024 film No nos moverán (We Shall Not Be Moved), while filmmaker Jorge Villalobos met with students on November 3 to close the festival with a virtual conversation about the animated documentary Home Is Somewhere Else (Mi casa está en otra parte, 2022), which he codirected with Carlos Hagerman. 

Student leadership was central to the festival’s success. Graduate student Ingrid Vega played a key role in building partnerships with the Consulate of Mexico in Boise, which participated in the virtual dialogues, strengthening cultural ties between Idaho and Mexico. Together with the contributions of her peers, these efforts extended the reach of the festival beyond campus and into the wider community. Many of the participating graduate students are based in different regions of the United States, where they actively promoted the festival and shared ISU’s cultural and educational initiatives with their own local networks, further expanding the university’s visibility and impact nationwide.

The Hispanic Film Festival concluded with closing remarks by Provost Adam Bradford, who reflected on the festival’s spirit of openness and cultural exchange and read Pablo Neruda’s “Ode to Walt Whitman,” reminding audiences that poetry, and by extension, art, remains a beacon of hope, human dignity, and universal solidarity.

Supported by PRAGDA, the Government of Spain, the Department of Anthropology and Languages, the Cultural Events Committee Grant, the Graduate School, and ISU’s Global Studies and Political Science programs, the Hispanic Film Festival has become one of the university’s most distinctive cultural traditions. More than a series of screenings, it stands as a model of innovation in liberal arts education, where students learn by doing, reflect critically, and build bridges between the classroom, the community, and the world.