For Milly Quezada, agreeing to a movie about her life meant deciding how much of that life to place in someone else’s hands. The Dominican singer told Diario Libre in April that she initially resisted the proposal. What changed her mind was the prospect of participating in the telling, preserving her account and acknowledging the people who helped her. That decision sits behind Milly: Queen of Merengue, Leticia Tonos’s 2026 musical feature.
The film’s U.S. festival journey recently included an October 1 presentation at AFI Silver in Maryland. Earlier this year, it finished first runner-up for the narrative-feature audience award at the Miami Film Festival. These are distinct milestones: an audience-voted placing in Miami and a subsequent festival screening in Silver Spring. Neither is a new October world premiere.
AFI’s synopsis follows the beginnings of Quezada’s musical career in Washington Heights, where she and her siblings form a band playing merengue for their community. Sandy Hernandez portrays Milly. Tonos has directing, writing and producing credits, with Junior Rosario also credited on the screenplay. The project connects a Dominican performer’s story to the New York neighborhood in which part of that story unfolded, placing the work of making music alongside the question of who needs to hear it.
In an interview with Acento, Tonos said her enthusiasm for music and dance helped draw her toward the project. She also explained that it did not begin with a fixed plan to make a musical; that form emerged as she worked out how to tell Quezada’s story. Music became a way to express the character’s interior life. That is the director’s account of her approach, rather than a verdict on whether every number achieves it.
Quezada’s April interview offers a complementary perspective on the adaptation. She described a selective account shaped through multiple script versions, with attention to the other people whose lives intersect with her own. For a living subject, a biographical film can involve both the wish to remember and the wish to protect relationships. Participation makes those decisions part of the production, even when the finished film cannot contain every episode.
The result invites a more specific conversation than a celebration of a famous name. A singer brings memories and boundaries; a filmmaker chooses a dramatic form; writers and performers turn that selection into scenes and songs. Tonos told Acento she hopes the project encourages further exploration of the musical in Dominican cinema. The current festival circulation gives audiences a chance to consider that ambition alongside the story of the artist who agreed to share her beginnings.