Texas Monthly is pleased to announce that two documentaries, Night in West Texas and Take It Away: The Rise and Fall of Tejano Hollywood, will be screened at the 32nd annual CineSol Festival in Brownsville this weekend. Texas Monthly is an executive producer on both films.

Take it Away, directed and produced by Adrian Alejandro Arredondo and Myrna Perez, will be the feature film that will air the opening night at the South Texas festival on December 5. It chronicles the life of the late tejano-music legend and TV host Johnny Canales and the evolution of the genre he shepherded onto the world stage, featuring artists including Selena, Ramón Ayala, Intocable, and Michael Salgado; the festival has teased performances from some of those featured in the film.

Take it Away is executive produced by Texas Monthly and Trojan Horse Media and has also screened at other notable festivals, including the Dallas International Film Festival; the Nvision Latino Film & Music Festival in Miami, where it won Best Documentary; Austin’s Cine Las Americas festival; San Antonio’s CineFestival; and Cinema Tucsón in Arizona.

On December 7, CineSol attendees will get a chance to watch Night in West Texas, the Oscar-qualifying wrongful-conviction documentary by Peabody Award–winning and two-time Emmy-nominated director Deborah Esquenazi. The film traces the forty-year legal odyssey of James Reyos, a gay Apache man who was wrongfully convicted of murdering a closeted priest in West Texas. After decades being ensnared by the criminal-justice system, his case took a promising new turn when a police chief found long-buried evidence.

The film, produced by Daniel J. Chalfen, Adrienne Collatos, and James Costa, is also set to have its theatrical release in New York this weekend, with screenings and Q&As on December 5 and 6, as well as its theatrical release in Los Angeles next week while continuing its festival run. It will screen in theaters across Texas in January 2026; details and links for tickets are available here and will be updated as more info becomes available.

Both Take it Away and Night in West Texas represent Texas Monthly’s first foray into executive producing nonscripted feature films; in 2023, it debuted the nonscripted seriesHow to Create a Sex Scandalon HBO Max and has numerous other nonscripted projects in the works. The company is behind many successful scripted TV and film projects, including Paramount+’s Landman, Netflix’s Hit Man, and HBO Max’s Love & Death—all of which have been adapted from Texas Monthly stories.