Tribeca Film Festival ‘26: Matininó’s Experiment with Drama and Documentary Pays Off
By Elizabeth Paige Richardson | June 10, 2026 | Celebrity & Culture, Movie Reviews
Matininó is not just a drama. It’s also not just a documentary. Director Gabriela Díaz Arp’s film is a creative blend of both, complete with vibrant colors, bizarre, dream-like scenery, and a real-life story of perseverance at its core.
The narrative of the Villanueva family, multiple generations of women and girls navigating motherhood and mother-daughter relationships as Puerto Rican women in a world defined by a machismo culture, is the focus of the film. We follow them as they weave a superhero story, with fragments of those scenes spliced into the documentary. From Abuela Idaliz Villanueva to the youngest member of the family, each one had a different perspective that made the film come to life.
For me, the most captivating parts of the film were the moments when the documentary style came through in full force. Scenes where the Villanueva women sat face-to-face with each other in plastic chairs and discussed their experience with abuse, shame, anger and motherhood. What really makes these scenes work is that the mask is off, and the film never shies away from the complexity of violence and growth. Diaz Arp, nor her subjects, never flinches from the details.
Still, the portions that lean into the drama aspect are mesmerizing in Diaz Arp’s first feature. The women wind through forests and fields in imaginative and colorful costumes, imagining themselves as superhero personas, hammering in the idea of sticking together as a group and having to make sacrifices to protect each other. It feels like a therapeutic exercise captured on camera.
Neither element dominates the other in terms of screentime, as the director cuts back and forth between these imaginative “play” scenes and sit-down conversations. Together, both elements paint a complete picture of being bound to, and breaking, cycles of trauma.
The image is in stark contrast to the Boricua (Puerto Rican) culture that is en vogue, thanks to top-selling, high-energy acts like Bad Bunny. But stories like the Villanueva family are real, and Díaz Arp portrays them with all the sensitivity and creativity they deserve.
