Remote Strutting 

"Be good. It doesn’t mean you can’t be tough. It doesn’t mean you always have to be nice. Just be good."

Now that we're officially halfway through Hispanic Heritage Month, let's look ahead at movies featuring Hispanic & Latine representation through the rest of 2021.

I was able to watch the gleefully mesmerizing Disney remake that was Robert Zemeckis’ Pinocchio. I was enthralled by Zemeckis’ iteration. 

Films staring black transgender actresses/actors are few and far between, it’s refreshing to see a demographic represented in film that hardly gets any attention.  This is especially important as the Black trans community has been shown in studies to face the highest level of discrimination amongst general trans and non-binary groups. That is why it’s so crucial that we amplify their voices through any way we can, storytelling being a great medium to do so.

What seems like such a simple story of survival is so much more than that—it’s a story of family, and of war, and of destruction. It’s painful to watch, but not in a bad way. It makes its audience reflect on their own actions, and in how they are complicit in the sufferings of others as the adults in this film are. Grave of the Fireflies does not hold back from being heartbreaking, and it shouldn’t. It tells a message that needs to be heard decades after the war, and a story that cannot be forgotten by history.