Rafaela is the second film in the three-part series Caribbean Eye:
Auteur Cinema from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. Caribbean
Eye is part of the 2024 Fotofocus Biennial: backstories. The biennial
theme, backstories, focuses on stories that are not evident at first
glance. They offer context for what happened previously or out of
view, providing narratives not yet told or presented from a new
perspective. Once told, they shed light on current circumstances and
events.

About Rafaela:
Rafaela is a young girl from a dangerous neighborhood of Santo
Domingo, who lives within a dysfunctional family, and dreams about
moving to a better place with her mother. When she grows up, she
becomes the leader of a criminal gang that “Mario el Mago”, a known
drug dealer of the neighborhood, wants to force to work for him.
Rafaela is constantly intimidated for being a woman they consider
transgender, and that they can’t understand. And while the world
around her gets more violent, she fights to find her identity.

About Caribbean Eye:
The Caribbean is the site of a dynamic new emerging film culture. In
the last decade or so, Caribbean films by an exciting new generation
of filmmakers have been winning prizes at international film
festivals, finding more distribution than ever before, and surprising
viewers around the world with stories that are new for international
audiences. The films in the series Caribbean Eye: Auteur Cinema from
Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic tell stories we may not have
not heard, and are set in places we may think we know but may not have
really seen, using fresh approaches that will leave viewers with new
images of the Caribbean and new ideas to think about.