The Howl of the Furies (El turno de la aullante) took the $1,500 first prize in this year’s eighth annual Local Flavor Showcase and Awards in the El Paso Community Foundation’s Plaza Classic Film Festival on July 27. Local Flavor was sponsored by the El Paso Film and Creative Industries Commission, whose Director Drew Mayer-Oakes presented the awards, and the Texas Film Commission.
About 300 people attended this year’s Local Flavor in the Plaza Theatre. It featured 11 local and locally connected short films, which were chosen by a panel of judges from among nearly 50 submissions. A public reception for the filmmakers followed in the El Paso Community Foundation Room.
Howl was written and directed by Bayron Norman of Torreón, Coahuila, MX. Two UTEP alumni worked on the film — script supervisor Alejandra Lozano and soundtrack vocalist Mar Lozano. The 26-minute film is about a tortured woman who waits to exact revenge on the man who killed her family.
The $1,000 second prize went to El Paso filmmaker Diego Muñoz Holguín for his autobiographical short Sombras Nada Mas, about the trauma of being kidnapped at gunpoint as a youth in Ciudad Juárez. It was a good Plaza Classic for Muñoz, who also was the subject of a sold-out showcase of several of his works on July 24 in the Philanthropy Theatre (Sombras Nada Mas was not part of that program).
There was a two-way tie, a first, for the $750 third prize, with Local Flavor 2021 award winner Celina Galicia and Plaza Classic Film Camp alum Harmony Schlesinger sharing the award.
Galicia’s documentary Ternura Radical dealt with ongoing femicides in Juárez. Ternura Radical is also part of this year’s ninth annual Femme Frontera Filmmaker Showcase, which played the Philanthropy Theatre on July 26. Schlesinger’s I Like You a Bot is a whimsical short about a well-programmed robot that has difficulties navigating the end of a romantic relationship.
We also had a two-way tie for the $250 Audience Favorite Award, which was determined by an audience text-to-vote procedure. Samuel Thomas Garcia was selected for his witty genre piece Brooklyn Love, which shared the award with Dakota Thomas for the lush, nostalgic Crawford, about the waning days of Joan Crawford’s career.
Garcia, a student at New Mexico State University and Doña Ana Community College, also won the $100 College Film Award for Brooklyn Love, while Hanks High School student Theresita Acosta won the $50 High School Film Award for her sci-fi fantasy The Tooth Fixation.
For the third year, Local Flavor judges were film producer Javier Gonzalez, filmmaker and NMSU associate film professor Ilana Glassco Lapid and Asia Saucedo of the Plaza Classic Film Festival program advisory committee.
Submissions for next year’s Local Flavor will open in March. It’s free to submit. PCFF 2026 will be July 16-26 in and around the Plaza Theatre.
