Vainilla

Late 1980s, northern Mexico. In a modest house, seven women live together—three generations bound by an almost unbreakable bond. Men are nowhere to be seen. Debts are piling up and the threat of foreclosure looms like a shadow over their home, yet inside the house remains a refuge: a place where sorrow and joy, shame and hope coexist with ease.

Within this female microcosm, we follow eight-year-old Roberta. With a sharp gaze and a vivid imagination, she observes the women around her, as if each of them might hold a possible version of her own future. Roberta believes she can change her family’s fate—by saving the house, and at the same time finding answers to her first major existential questions.

VAINILLA is the feature debut of Mayra Hermosillo, known as an actress from the international series Narcos: Mexico and Amat Escalante’s Perdidos en la Noche. Drawing on her own childhood, Hermosillo crafts a tender, vibrant coming-of-age film, and an ode to womanhood in all its forms: different characters, generations, and ways of loving and surviving.

Warm and playful, yet also sharp and honest, VAINILLA shows through simple, emotionally precise scenes that true wealth lies not in money, but in care, imagination, and solidarity. Not to confront norms head-on, but to explore what it means to belong—and how we judge lives that fall just outside the frame, just beyond the norm.

In collaboration with KINOLATINO, the Latin American Film Festival in Brussels, Antwerp, Nivelles, and Louvain-la-Neuve from March 20 to 28, 2026. The Kinolatino Festival presents the best of Latin American cinema in Belgium. On the program: feature films and short films, fiction and documentaries in competition, meetings with filmmakers, lively debates… and of course, a festive atmosphere!