Film Screening: Dirty Hands | Manos Sucias
October 15, 2026 - 6:00 pm
Segal Theatre
The Graduate Center, CUNY
Film screening followed by a Q&A Session
Two estranged brothers set out from Buenaventura, Colombia, on a drug run along the Pacific coast, tasked with towing a torpedo filled with cocaine to a pickup point bound for Panama. One is closed off and world-weary; the other is young, talkative, and still hopeful. Thrown together on a decrepit fishing boat for hours on end, they have no choice but to find each other again.
Director Josef Kubota Wladyka is less interested in the mechanics of the drug trade than in the quiet moments between the danger: childhood songs, soccer memories, and the kind of conversation that only happens when there is nowhere to run. The two lead actors, both nonprofessionals, draw you in slowly and resist easy judgment. They are neither villains nor heroes, just two young men trying to get through.
The film is visually striking, with menacing skies and gunmetal waves that mirror the tension of the journey. Violence, when it comes, feels desperate and real rather than dramatic or glorified. Manos Sucias is ultimately a story about brothers, poverty, and the impossible choices that poverty makes ordinary.
Jerry W. Carlson (Ph.D., University of Chicago) is professor and a historian of narrative forms with special expertise in narrative theory, the history of the novel, global independent film, and the cinemas of the Americas. From 2013 to 2022 he served as Chair of the Department of Media & Communication Arts at The City College CUNY. In addition, at the CUNY Graduate Center he is a member of the doctoral faculties of French, Comparative Literature, and Film & Media Cultures and a Senior Fellow at the Bildner Center for Western Hemispheric Studies. He has lectured at Stanford, Columbia, Escuela Internacional de Cine y TV (Cuba), the University of Paris, and the University of Sao Paulo, among others. His current research is focused on how film and prose fiction from the Global South portray the histories and legacies of slavery, imperialism and colonialism. Moreover, he is an active producer, director, and writer with multiple Emmy Awards. As a Senior Producer for City University Television (CUNY-TV), he created the series City Cinematheque about film history, Canapé about French-American cultural relations, and Nueva York (in Spanish) about the Latino cultures of New York City. As an independent producer, his work includes the Showtime Networks production Dirt directed by Nancy Savoca and Looking for Palladin directed by Andrzej Krakowski. In 1998, he was inducted by France as a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Palmes Academiques.
Curator & Moderator: Jerry W. Carlson, Senior Fellow, The Bildner Center for Western Hemispheric Studies & Professor, The City College & Graduate Center, CUNY
TO REGISTER send email to bildner@gc.cuny.edu
