FEEL IT.STREAM
?

José María Cabral

Directing

Biography

José María Cabral (b. Santo Domingo, July 24, 1988) is a Dominican film director, screenwriter, and producer. Cabral started making films when he was 16 years old, making private screenings of short films to family and friends in local movie theaters, one of them “Excexos” got national distribution in 2008. His first feature film, Jaque Mate (2011), was screened at a high number of film festivals and selected as the Dominican entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar at the 85th Academy Awards, but it did not make the final shortlist. Arrobá and Despertar followed in 2013 and 2014, also making it into the festival circuits. In 2015 he released Detective Willy a comedy adventure film. Cabral premiered his last film, Carpinteros, in January at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, a story about the realities and relationships of prisoners in Dominican jails. Another films The Projectionist (2019), Isla de Plastico (2019), Hotel Coppelia (2020)

Known For

Woodpeckers
6.2

Julián finds love and a reason for living in the last place imaginable: the Dominican Republic's Najayo Prison. His romance, with fellow prisoner Yanelly, must develop through sign language and without the knowledge of dozens of guards.

Woodpeckers

2017
Hotel Coppelia
7.6

1965, Dominican Republic. At a seaside brothel, the lives of a group of prostitutes take a dramatic turn when freedom fighters stage a revolutionary coup, making them realise they can have a better life and perhaps find love. But everything changes when the US army supresses the revolution and takes the brothel as a military base: the girls will have to face the dilemma of either sleeping with the enemy or protecting their dignity at all costs.

Hotel Coppelia

2021
Tiger
9.0

A group of male adolescents are recruited by their parents into a bootcamp to be forged into hustlers, players, “tigueres”. This archetype is the highest idealization of the male character in Dominican and Caribbean culture. Alberto is the head coach of this camp who decides that Pablo’s time has come to join the group. But Pablo, his son, is a Tiguere in his own right, unbeknownst to Alberto, whose coming-of-age process clashes with his father’s authoritarian views. This leads Pablo on a journey of self-discovery.

Tiger

2024
Detective Willy
N/A

Willy Echevarria is a policeman in a small town in the Dominican Republic. He's also a fan of and yearns to be like the leads of classic Film Noir. After being fired in a bumbled operation with his bad cop partner Bruce Garcia, Willy has a chance to restore his career by finding a historical artifact that mysteriously went missing from a national museum.

Detective Willy

2015
Parsley
4.5

In 1937, near the border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti, a young Haitian woman named Marie is expecting her first child with Frank, her doting Dominican husband. After her mother's burial, she is awakened in the middle of the night by distant screams. The immediate execution of all Haitians on Dominican soil has been ordered — the so-called “Cut” — and what seals a victim’s fate is whether or not they can pronounce "perejil" (parsley). Marie takes off to find Frank in the next town over, with nothing but the clothes on her back.

Parsley

2022
Arrobá
5.0

Three guys decide to rob a bank but everything goes terribly wrong. One of them owns a time machine and they try robbing the bank again but fail to do so. With the time machine they start traveling to the past trying to do it right. In the journey they encounter the butterfly effect and need to get everything back to how it was.

Arrobá

2013
Check Mate
5.5

A famous game show host is forced to reveal all his secrets on live TV, with his wife and children held hostage.

Check Mate

2012
42nd Street
N/A

A sensory dive into the lives of dancers and artists hungry for fame, clashing with police tactics and unorthodox views. 42nd Street unveils a defiant counter-culture in the Dominican urban scene—all unfolding on a bold, unrelenting 600-meter 42nd street.

42nd Street

2025
15 minutos
N/A

After getting dumped by his girlfriend for his laziness, Felipe answers a phone call and gets an opportunity of changing his life in 15 minutes.

15 minutos

2009
The Projectionist
6.1

A lonely man who operates a film projector finds his only solace in a woman he sees on a film reel. After the reel is lost in an accident, he sets out to find the woman through the remotest, poorest places of the Dominican Republic.

The Projectionist

2019
Un Millón por Sobeida
N/A

A young team goes in search of the fugitive drug-trafficking accomplice Sobeida Félix Morel, hoping to get the reward of one million Dominican pesos offered by the authorities.

Un Millón por Sobeida

2009
Plastic Island
8.0

An overview on the problem of waste management in the Dominican Republic, more specifically plastics.

Plastic Island

2019
Tumba y Quema
5.0

No description available.

Tumba y Quema

2023
No image
N/A

What if your body is dead, but your mind is still connected to your wife's memories? René discovers an accident that changed his life forever. He will have to decide whether he lives or dies with it.

Despertar

2014