Rome Film Festival 2025: Esta Isla (dirs. Lorraine Jones Molina & Cristian Carretero) | Review

Esta Isla premiered at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, where it received a Special Jury Mention for Best Narrative Feature, as well as awards for Best Cinematography and Best New Narrative Director. The film, co-directed by Lorraine Jones Molina and Cristian Carretero also screened at this year’s Rome Film Festival, and well deserves every award – a gorgeous, impactful, and emotionally significant tale set on the cinematically underserved Puerto Rico. 

Shot over the course of a decade – between hurricanes, pandemics, and endless obstacles – Esta Isla is a film about an island, a state and a history as much as it is a story of a community, a family, and of a pair of lovers-on-the-run.

We open with a fishing town whose residents are struggling under the weight of poorly served economy. After a series of unfortunate events, teenagers Bebo (played beautifully by Zion Ortíz) and Lola (played by the wonderful Fabiola Brown) decide to flee into the wilderness, stumbling through tropical heat, meeting ex-revolutionaries turned plantain farmers who share crops and ancient wisdom far outside of the confines of the capitalism exported from the mainland of the U.S.A..

Cora (Teófilo Torres), one of the revolutionaries, takes in Bebo and Lila, and explains to them the mysteries of the island, of the caves as thresholds between the real and the spiritual, and about how people here “used to fight for something different.” 

There are films that shout their politics; Esta Isla lets them hum beneath the surface, woven intricately into the plot, the dialogue, the landscape. The ravages of capitalism and colonialism are felt in the sweat, the silence, the cramped homes, and the poorly paid labour. “I don’t know anyone on this island who can live from minimum wage,” states Charlie (Xavier Morales), Bebo’s older brother. Drugs are sold, the wealthier ‘gringoland’ across the water is spoken of with desire and disgust, the land of Puerto Rico itself cherished by both characters and camera.

Director Molina stated in an interview with Latin Media Co, “We had movies that we felt inspired by, like Badlands, Bonnie and Clyde, and Y Tu Mamá También… Through this type of story, there can be another layer where we can see and talk about other things, as well. We can see Puerto Rico, see the culture. As [the characters] get to know each other and themselves, they also get to know who we are as Puerto Ricans, as human beings, and connect.”

Beautiful, dramatic, political, and profoundly moving, Esta Isla is a love letter — to the island, to its people. A magical debut well worth a trip to the cinema.