15 Questions With Aitch Alberto, Director of The Long Con
Favorite theater: Paradigm Yucca Valley.
Name: Aitch Alberto
Occupation: Writer/Director
Links: Instagram
Watch Aitch’s latest short film The Long Con as part of LALIFF tonight @ TCL Chinese Theater or at Frameline San Francisco on June 19th
1. What’s your favorite day & time to go to the movies?
I love a matinee, especially a midweek matinee. There’s something sacred about sneaking away in the middle of the day and disappearing into a movie while the rest of the world is still working. It feels quieter, more intimate, almost like the theater belongs to you.
2. What’s your favorite movie theater?
I still miss the ArcLight Hollywood. I remember moving to Los Angeles and walking in for the first time, thinking, “This is how movies are supposed to be experienced.” It felt cinematic before the movie even started.
But lately, I’ve really fallen in love with my local theater out in the desert, Paradigm Yucca Valley. It feels like stepping back in time in the best way; stripped of pretense, deeply nostalgic, and connected to the same feeling I had when I first fell in love with movies as a kid.
3. What’s your go-to movie theater snack & drink combo?
Buncha Crunch and a soda. Always.
4. What’s your dream movie theater snack & drink combo (if noise and sound weren’t an issue)?
Honestly, I’d still stick with Buncha Crunch and a soda. Some things don’t need reinventing.
5. First movie you remember seeing in a theater?
I have a very vivid memory of the feeling after watching Pretty Woman in a theater. I was too young to understand it, but I remember being fascinated by the whole experience, asking, “How did they do that?”
6. Last movie you saw in a theater?
7. Is there a movie you wish you could have seen in a theater?
The Lost Boys. No question. That movie feels designed for a packed crowd at midnight. I did watch it at Cinespia, which was cool, but I would’ve loved to have been a part of the initial discovery.
8. Have you ever seen a movie more than once in theaters?
Of course. Most recently, Sinners. I watched it twice in a row.
9. Do you stay through the credits or leave as soon as the film ends?
I’ve done both. Sometimes you want to sit with the feeling a little longer, and sometimes the movie tells you exactly when it’s over. I remember not being able to get up right away when I watched Dancer In The Dark at Cocowalk in Miami.
10. What’s one thing you would change to make movie theaters better?
Absolutely no phone use. Everyone should have to lock their phones away in those security pouches. Movies deserve full attention, and honestly, audiences do too.
11. Tell me about an especially memorable moviegoing experience that stands out in your mind.
Moulin Rouge! and feeling like somebody had translated emotion into spectacle. It wasn’t just the movie itself; it was the feeling of being overwhelmed by color, music, heartbreak, melodrama, and excess.
Growing up, movies were never just entertainment to me. They were portals. Escape hatches. I think that experience shaped the kind of filmmaker I became: Someone interested in stories that are emotionally raw but wrapped inside something seductive and cinematic. I still chase that feeling. When a film completely consumes the room and everyone inside it.
12. What’s a movie you’re looking forward to seeing?
From everything I’ve read, I’m hyped for Gentle Monster.
13. What’s your dream combination of director and lead(s)?
Sofia Coppola and Cardi B.
14. If you could live in a movie, which one would it be?
Cuarón’s A Little Princess. There’s something so magical about the way it treats imagination as survival; how fantasy and beauty become tools for enduring loneliness and pain. It’s tender and heartbreaking, but still full of wonder. I think that balance has stayed with me creatively ever since: The idea that even in darkness, there’s still room for glamour, fantasy, and hope.
Or maybe I’d live inside In The Mood For Love for like… three days until the yearning killed me.
Or Hook, duh, I’ve always wanted to be Tinkerbell.
15. Why do you think people should continue seeing movies at the movie theater?
Because it’s one of the last places where strangers still agree to feel something together in real time, everything else has become fragmented. A theater asks you to surrender. To sit in the dark. To pay attention. To laugh together, grieve together, and hold tension together. That collective experience changes films. It changes you. We lose something cultural and emotional if we lose that ritual.
Now I cannot rest until I see a Sofia Coppola - Cardi B collabo!!
Dancer in the Dark mentioned!