Pérez Rodríguez

Why will your students love Pérez Rodríguez? Because it will spark urgent conversations about class, legitimacy, inheritance, and national identity—all while laughing out loud. Because Dominican filmmaker Humberto Tavárez is a talent to watch. And because the film’s dark humor makes difficult discussions about family hypocrisy and social performance accessible.

The debut film from Dominican director Humberto Tavárez, Pérez Rodríguez is a delightful, moving, and funny satire of both the family institution and the Dominican middle class. The film ran for 13 weeks in local cinemas and scored impressive box office numbers.

Carlos, Cristina, and Carmen are the Pérez Rodríguez siblings, a middle-class family whose lives are turned upside down by their father’s death. Amid three family gatherings—a birth, a funeral, and a birthday—a half-brother their father had outside of marriage reappears. Contacted by his father years ago, he now controls the will and the family inheritance. This revelation unleashes secrets, resentments, and confrontations that will test the true value of their family bonds.

With a narrative structure reminiscent of Four Weddings and a Funeral, the film tackles blood ties, national identity, delusions of grandeur, and social hypocrisy with raw, dark humor. A fantastic portrait of contradictory characters—wonderfully performed and full of humanity—who are at times miserable and despicable, at others endearing and helpless. It’s impossible not to empathize with them in a film that is profoundly Dominican and, at the same time, profoundly universal.