Carmen Oquendo-Villar

After years trying to conceive, Carmelo and his wife learn there’s a problem with Carmelo’s sperm. To escape this humiliation and bruised sense of manhood, Carmelo hastily accepts a work assignment in Puerto Rico, where he can forget his 'problem', at least, for the moment. The assignment, however, brings Carmelo into a strange and surprising world that changes him, and his family, forever.

The Needle is a portrait of a home clinic for body modification in one of San Juan's most impoverished neighborhoods. In telling the story of the clinic's owner and two clients, the film explores addiction as expressed through the search for beauty, social acceptance, and inter-personal affection.

Brothels are rarely seen as safe or dignifying. Yet, in a red light district of Colombia, a country torn by decades of war, there's a tiny brothel named "Tabaco y Ron," which acts as a shelter and shield for trans sex workers that work there. Through a choral portrait of the trans community that inhabits the brothel, this documentary constructs an intimate vignette of this remarkable space. Located in Santafé, Bogotá, the brothel operates in a zone that concentrates all the miseries of a bloodstained region but is also an oasis for all people desperately fleeing war.

Walking the dark, invisible passageways hidden behind Bogotá’s bright neon lights, Diana, a transgender woman becomes a crucial catalyst of the Zona Especial de Servicios de Alto Impacto (ZESAI). ZESAI is a social policy experiment intended to promote social integration by legalizing sex work within the residential neighborhood of Santa Fe.

Camil is the portrait of a young Puerto Rican transsexual who travels to Ecuador to begin the transition process. The film addresses Camil's aspirations, as well as the twists - challenging and sometimes confusing - that life presents.