Memories of a Penitent Heart
Directed by Cecilia Aldorando
Twenty-five years after her uncle Miguel dies of AIDS, a filmmaker tracks down his estranged lover – now a Franciscan monk – unearthing a buried history of faith, secrecy, and unresolved family grief.
United States | 2025 | 72 minutes | English | Order No. W251323
SYNOPSIS
Blending newly discovered home movies, letters, and archival footage with intimate contemporary interviews, MEMORIES OF A PENITENT HEART follows filmmaker Cecilia Aldarondo as she confronts a long-buried family secret surrounding her uncle Miguel’s death at the height of the AIDS crisis, when the disease was widely condemned as sin. A decade later, determined to understand the silence and shame that shaped her family’s response, she searches for Miguel’s estranged partner, Robert. She finds him, but he is now Father Aquin, a Franciscan monk carrying years of grief and anger. As past and present collide, the film becomes a powerful reckoning with the human cost of stigma, the weaponization of faith, and the unresolved wounds left by AIDS.
PRESS
The only way to understand Memories of a Penitent Heart is to see it yourself. I hope you do. My words can't do it justice.
A highly personal portrait of the importance of embracing who you have while you still can.
SCREENING HIGHLIGHTS AND AWARDS
- Indie Memphis Film Festival, Cecilia Aldarondo (director), 2016 Winner for Special Jury Award for Emotional Honesty
- Austin Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival, 2016 Winner, Best Documentary
- Tribeca Film Festival, Cecilia Aldarondo (director), 2016 Nominee for Jury Award Best Documentary Feature
- Cleveland International Film Festival, Cecilia Aldarondo (director), 2017 Nominee for Greg Gund Memorial Standing Up Award
- Tribeca Film Festival, 2016
- GIFF, 2016
- InsideOut Toronto LGBT Film Festival, 2016
- New Orleans Film Festival, 2016
- Twist Seattle Queer Film Festival, 2016
- Guanajuato International Film Festival, 2016
- Costa Rica International Film Festival, 2016
- Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, 2016
ABOUT FILMMAKER(S)
Cecilia Aldarondo
Cecilia Aldarondo is an award-winning director, producer and writer from the Puerto Rican diaspora who works at the intersection of poetics and politics. She is known for her features MEMORIES OF A PENITENT HEART (2016), LANDFALL (2020), YOU WERE MY FIRST BOYFRIEND (2023), and DEAR MS: A REVOLUTION IN PRINT (2025). Her films have premiered at Tribeca and SXSW and broadcast on the award-winning PBS Series POV as well as HBO. Aldarondo has a PhD in Cultural Studies from the University of Minnesota, an MA in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths College, an MA in Gender Studies from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, and a BA in English from the University of Florida, and she teaches at Williams College. She is a member of the documentary branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. (02/25)
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Girls' War
As the forces of ISIS and Assad tear through villages and society in Syria and Northern Iraq, a group of brave and idealistic women are taking up arms against them—and winning inspiring victories. Members of “The Free Women’s Party” come from Paris, Turkish Kurdistan, and other parts of the world. Their dream: To create a Democratic Syria, and a society based on gender equality. Guns in hand, these women are carrying on a movement with roots that run 40 years deep in the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) in Turkey. GIRL’S WAR honors the legacy of Sakine Cansiz, co-founder of the PKK who was assassinated in Paris in 2013, and reflects on the sacrifices made by all of the women in the movement, who have endured jail, rape, war, and persecution in their quest to liberate their lives and sisters from male dominance. With scenes of solidarity, strength, and love amongst these brave women soldiers, GIRL'S WAR is a surprising story of Middle Eastern feminism on the front lines.
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Ohero:kon - Under the Husk
OHERO:KON - UNDER THE HUSK follows two Mohawk girls on their journey to become Mohawk women.
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Heather Booth: Changing the World
Renowned organizer and activist Heather Booth began her remarkable career at the height of the Civil Rights movement. Through her life and work, this inspiring film explores many of the pivotal moments in progressive movements that altered our history over the last fifty years, from her involvement with Fannie Lou Hamer and the Freedom Summer Project, to her founding of the JANE Underground in 1964, to her personal relationships with respected leaders such as Julian Bond and Senator Elizabeth Warren. Featuring interviews from close friends, clients, political colleagues and current Midwest Academy students, HEATHER BOOTH: CHANGING THE WORLD explores Heather’s legacy in progressive politics and organizing.
At a time when many are wondering how to make their voices heard, when civil and women's rights are under attack, Lilly Rivlin’s acclaimed documentary is an empowering look at how social change happens.
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Footprint: Population, Consumption and Sustainability
FOOTPRINT takes a dizzying spin around the globe, witnessing population explosions, overconsumption, limited resources, and expert testimony as to what a world straining at its limits can sustain. We spend time with indigenous health workers, activists, and the ordinary people in the Philippines, Mexico, Pakistan and Kenya, women who all challenge the idea that our world can continue to support the weight of humanity’s footprint on it. FOOTPRINT offers unprecedented access to the people on the ground who are all in their unique way challenging the status quo and making us rethink what’s really at stake. There are surprising revelations on who are the players standing in the way of solutions and those pushing for it, without losing sight of the array of possible solutions that open up when we take the time to ask this critical question of how many of us there are in the world and what the Earth can sustain if we are to all live a dignified life.
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The Revival: Women and the Word
THE REVIVAL: WOMEN AND THE WORD chronicles the US tour of a group of Black lesbian poets and musicians, who become present-day stewards of a historical movement to build community among queer women of color. Their journey to strengthen their community is enriched by insightful interviews with leading Black feminist thinkers and historians, including Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Nikki Finney, and Alexis Deveaux. As the group tours the country, the film reveals their aspirations and triumphs, as well as the unique identity challenges they face encompassing gender, race, and sexuality. This is a rarely seen look into a special sisterhood - one where marginalized voices are both heard and respected.
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A Revolution in Four Seasons
The Tunisian Revolution sparked the Arab Spring. But revolution was the easy part—as two women learned on the journey from protest to functioning government. Emna Ben Jemaa and Jawhara Ettis represent opposite sides of their country’s politics: One is a well-known journalist in the city, fighting for free speech. The other is a strict Islamist from a rural town, elected to help draft the new constitution. Despite their differences, both face the threat of extremists hijacking their fragile political process, and both Emna and Jawhara have to make difficult choices to balance their public political roles with their domestic environment.
The film is a gripping and surprising perspective on the clash between Islam and secularism, and the political role of women in the Arab world. Offering an insightful portrait of the messy work of democracy, A REVOLUTION IN FOUR SEASONS is especially poignant in this global era of divided politics.
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PROFILED
Profiled knits the stories of mothers of Black and Latino youth murdered by the NYPD into a powerful indictment of racial profiling and police brutality, and places them within a historical context of the roots of racism in the U.S. Some of the victims—Eric Garner, Michael Brown—are now familiar the world over. Others, like Shantel Davis and Kimani Gray, are remembered mostly by family and friends in their New York neighborhoods.
Ranging from the routine harassment of minority students in an affluent Brooklyn neighborhood to the killings and protests in Staten Island and Ferguson, Missouri, PROFILED bears witness to the racist violence that remains an everyday reality for Black and Latino people in this country. Moving interviews with victims’ family members are juxtaposed with sharply etched analyses by evolutionary biologist, Joseph L.Graves, Jr, (The Race Myth) and civil rights lawyer, Chauniqua D. Young, (Center for Constitutional Rights, Stop and Frisk lawsuit). PROFILED gives us a window on one of the burning issues of our time.
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Ovarian Psycos
Riding at night through streets deemed dangerous in Eastside Los Angeles, the Ovarian Psycos use their bicycles to confront the violence in their lives. At the helm of the crew is founder Xela de la X, a single mother and poet M.C. dedicated to recruiting an unapologetic, misfit crew of women of color. The film intimately chronicles Xela as she struggles to strike a balance between her activism and nine year old daughter Yoli; street artist Andi who is estranged from her family and journeys to become a leader within the crew; and bright eyed recruit Evie, who despite poverty, and the concerns of her protective Salvadoran mother, discovers a newfound confidence.
The film Ovarian Psycos rides along with the Ova’s, exploring the impact of the group’s activism, born of feminist ideals, Indigenous understanding and an urban/hood mentality, on neighborhood women and communities as they confront injustice, racism, and violence, and take back their streets one ride at a time.
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Four Wives – One Man
From Nahid Persson, the filmmaker of the award-winning Prostitution Behind the Veil, comes an intimate portrait of a polygamist family in a rural Iranian village. Persson reveals the intricacies of the relationships between the four wives, their husband, their astoundingly free-spoken mother-in-law and their numerous children. Sometimes humorous and often heartbreaking, this film follows the daily lives of the wives whose situation has turned them into both bitter rivals and co-conspirators against their abusive husband.
Persson’s camera unobtrusively and beautifully captures the range of the family’s interactions – from peaceful, pastoral scenes of a family picnic, to the temporary chaos caused by a broken faucet in the kitchen, to a furtive, whispered conversation between two wives about the latest beating. The women’s work – making bread, weaving carpets, milking and herding the sheep – provide the background to their frank conversations. Avoiding sensationalism and sentimentality, this film provides unique insights into the practice of polygamy and its effect on the women involved.
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