Margherita Tortora (Thomas Breen photo)
November 11, 2015 - Margherita Tortora was not planning on hosting a film festival this year. A Spanish instructor at Yale who has been the director of the New England Festival of Ibero American Cinema (NEFIAC) for the past five years, Tortora wanted a break from the time, effort, and bureaucratic headaches that come with organizing an annual not-for-profit film festival. The only problem: She kept getting movies in the mail.
“All these filmmakers didn’t realize I wasn’t doing [NEFIAC] this year,” Tortora said, “so they just kept sending me their films.” With movies in hand and just enough funding from Yale’s Council on Latin American and Iberian Studies, she decided to put on a festival celebrating Spanish and Portuguese-language films after all — her sixth in as many years.