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Vivacious Dominican merengue phenom Milly Quezada receives just accolades in the spirited biopic “Milly, the Queen of Merengue,” an electric musical set to hit the London Screenings Market later this month.

Forced to flee during the Dominican Republic’s turbulent civil war, Quezada’s family immigrated to Manhattan’s bustling Latin district, Washington Heights, just as the diaspora’s thirst for homespun music intensified.

The hope-tinged devotional spans the singer’s journey, from adolescence and nascent career with Milly, Jocelyn and Los Vecinos, through her debilitating struggle with depression that led to a rousing comeback as a solo artist, earning her several Latin Grammy’s and cementing the rightful, royal title she defends to this day.

Directed by Santo Domingo-born, award-winning director Leticia Tonos — whose films “Love Child,” “Cristo Rey,” “A State of Madness,” and “Aire, Just Breathe” were submitted to the Oscars by the Dominican Republic for Best International...

In 2024, there is no shortage of possible imagined dystopian futures. Not just because there’s an ever-growing canon of films that dream up humanity’s worst-case scenarios but because news about climate disasters, headlines about dwindling natural resources and well-founded fears about the encroaching power of AI dominate our day-to-day lives. That’s perhaps what makes Leticia Tonos’s “Aire, Just Breathe” both incredibly timely and decidedly familiar. The Dominican sci-fi film is an austere vision of a ravaged future that, while visually striking, remains much too hollow, cerebral, even, to fully pack an emotional punch.

The year is 2147 and Tania (Sophie Gaëlle) has learned to live on her own. Every day she wakes and cares for what scant plants she can nurture in the underground bunker she’s come to call home. Despite not having had contact with any other humans in quite some time (she may be the...

Dominican filmmaker Leticia Tonos’ sci-fi drama “Aire” has won the inaugural Fantastic Latido Award at the Cannes Film Market’s new Fantastic Pavilion genre hub.

Presented by Madrid-based Latido Films, the Fantastic Latido Award offers international sales representation for the winning film.

“Aire” centers on Tania, a conservation biologist living in a future dystopian world where the human race has been reduced to extinction level by pollution and disease. In an effort to keep her species from disappearing completely, she tries with the help of Vida, an artificial intelligence system, to self-inseminate herself.

Her life with the AI system is disrupted, however, when Azarias, a mysterious traveler, arrives, creating a tense and dangerously toxic three-way relationship.

“Aire” stars Sophie Gaelle Gomez (“Rosario Tijeras”), Dominican actor Jalsen Santana and Spain’s Paz Vega as the voice of Vida.

Produced by Tonos’ Producciones Línea Espiral Srl and Lantica Media along with Dominican...