Valentina
Director: Tatti Ribeiro
United States, 2025, 79 min
Shooting Format:Digital (printed to film)
Festival Year:2026
Category:Narrative Feature
Genres:Comedy, Hybrid
Cast:Keyla Monterroso Mejia
Crew:Writers: Tatti Ribeiro, Noelle Forougi. Producers: Jack Pearkes, Noelle Forougi, Tatti Ribeiro. Executive Producers: Jessica Alba, Tracey Nyberg; Story By: Noelle Forougi, Tatti Ribeiro
Email:jackpearkes@gmail.com
Synopsis
VALENTINA is a hybrid film — part narrative-comedy and part documentary – pressed against the backdrop of the busiest border crossing in the United States.
After receiving a series of tickets she can’t afford to pay, Valentina decides to confront her local city council. What should be a straightforward task is quickly derailed by a crippling combination of laziness, debt, bureaucracy, partying, and imposing members of a close-knit family. For 48 hours, we meander through West Texas with her.
VALENTINA is a portrait of young adulthood in an American border town. If you’ve ever wondered what the US-Mexico border is like, this is it.
Keyla Monterroso Mejia — the only actor in the film — stars as Valentina. All other people, locations, laws, conversations, cops, priests, and city electeds are real.
About the director
Tatti is a journalist and filmmaker. She founded franknews, an independent news outlet that works to bring context to a 24/7 news cycle. She has conducted over a thousand interviews with academics, congressmen, senators, Supreme Court justices, and labor leaders. She is a graduate of the USC School of Cinematic Arts.
Filmmaker's note
VALENTINA is a comedy about finding yourself. When I first got to El Paso, I thought I was reporting on outside phenomena - migration policy, border security, local politics. Eventually, I noticed that the city was really reintroducing me to myself, and to the narrative and comedic lens I left for journalism. So much of my writing and reporting was bleak - obviously - but my experience wasn't. It was funny, and wild, and as stupid as it was moving.
When that clicked, I saw the movie start to finish. It is about me, and my immigrant parents, and my attitude problem. But it's also about the arbitrary letter of the law, the people those laws punish, and the fucking maze of day to day life when you're poor and living at the border.
It's a movie I feel I have to make. I was surprised to find that a comedy allowed me to pursue a more honest and incendiary approach to journalism than a standard approach would typically allow. Journalists and comics have the same job. It's to observe, basically. And then to take those observations and distill them so that any audience, of any size, in any city, hears what you're saying and relates. The more specific, the more connection.