A documentary about one of football's most disputed matches opened the AFI Latin American Film Festival on September 16. The Match revisits Argentina's 1986 World Cup meeting with England, the game in which Diego Maradona scored the Hand of God goal. AFI selected its U.S. premiere to begin a program of 43 films from 21 countries.
The festival ran through October 7 at AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center in Silver Spring, Maryland. Its August 26 announcement identified 12 U.S. and North American premieres across the lineup.
A program with several starting points
The Match used archival material and narration from footballers Gary Lineker and Jorge Valdano.
The centerpiece and closing selections included:
- The Meltdown: Manuela Martelli's coming-of-age thriller, set in Chile after the Pinochet era.
- Ashes: Diego Luna's story of a young Mexican woman and her brother traveling to Spain to join their mother.
- Bitter Christmas: Pedro Almodóvar's film about two filmmakers facing creative difficulties, selected to close the festival.
The archive outlasts the screenings
AFI has kept the 2026 program guide online. It preserves the titles and screening information for readers discovering the event afterward. The festival's current page reports more than 8,000 tickets sold and links to trailers. Ticket sales count admissions, so that figure should not be read as a count of distinct attendees.
A past festival listing does not establish that a film is now streaming in the United States. Use the guide to identify the title and filmmaker, then check a distributor or a cinema's current calendar. Keeping the original title with the English title can make that search more precise when a film reaches another country under a different name.
The program's original titles include El Partido for The Match, Ceniza en la boca for Ashes and Amarga Navidad for Bitter Christmas. Those names and the directors' credits can help identify a film if a distributor later uses a different English title.
