SCREEN | Self-Reflections on 'Beba' x DOXA 2023

"Violence lives in my DNA."

DOXA Documentary Film Festival

First-time filmmaker Rebeca Huntt chronicles her own life and racial identity in the striking coming-of-age, cinematic self-portrait Beba. Her intimate documentary interrogates Huntt's own family history as a series of introspective visual memories recalling her childhood growing up in New York City as an Afro-Latina.

As the daughter of a Dominican father and Venezuelan mother, the film investigates a culture of societal and generational trauma inherited through a legacy of ancient wounds and how it shaped her young life. Throughout Beba, Huntt constantly yearns to forge her own creative path amidst a changing landscape of intense racial and political unrest wherever she is.

Huntt crafts Beba into a haunting Afro-Latinx autobiographical documentary about a New Yorker's cultural past. She stitches together a movingly unvarnished visual poem of a hungry biracial artist trying to define herself through a mixed ancestry of conflict. It's a thoughtful summation of someone struggling to define themselves while addressing internalized anti-Blackness.

Beba screens at the 2023 DOXA Documentary Film Festival as part of the A Radical Pluriverse program at The Cinematheque on May 5th. It's also available to stream on Mubi in Canada (on Hulu in the U.S.) or through digital and video on demand.


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