The Latino film market has been growing for some time due to a demand increase. The film industry has tried to satisfy the demand by opening up companies like Pantelion to try and cater to the mass audience while companies like Cinema Tropical and Latin Heat have worked hard to expand their content to the ever increasing audience.

However, there continues to be a gap in the industry as Latinos are still not well represented in Hollywood and the most-bought foreign language films still hail from Europe. Kino Lorber, which is one of the strongest distributors for international cinema, is taking one more step in making Latino film more visible by creating a new home media distribution label, Sol Y Luna Films. The division will release Spanish Language films in both the U.S and Canada and will make sure that the films are both commercial and award-winning.

The Rise of Latino Cinema

This new plan comes after a year that was filled with some of the most acclaimed Latin films and which saw Latinos win awards at Cannes, Sundance, Tribeca, Berlin and Venice. It also saw Colombia get its first Oscar nomination and Chile get a Golden Globe nomination. The fact that Kino Lorber is opening a division for this specific purpose speaks to this growing prominence of Latino film.

Despite this growing power, there are still hundreds of Latin films that are without homes and despite international and critical success, these films never seem to get a proper distributor in America. If they do, their exposure is minimal.

Latino films have shown that they have an audience and that was best shown by last year's "Wild Tales," which was a huge success at the box office, and "The second Mother," which was another great success. This year "Embrace of the Serpent" is also showing potential and is even doing better than some European fare. These are only three examples in a row of successes that show the power of latino cinema.

What does the future hold for Sol Y Luna?

There is no guarantee that this new venture will work but what it does show is that companies are seeing the need and they are taking advantage in being the first. For now Kino Lorber and Soy Y Luna have announced their inaugural slate of releases, which includes Eduardo Lucatero's "Preludio" and "Sobre Ella" by Mauricio T. Valle. "Juala de Oro" by Diego Quemada-Díez, which was part of Latin Post's top ten films of the year, will also be released by the new venture on May 24.

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