The image I keep coming back to is a shoebox of grass.
On Three Kings Eve, children in Puerto Rico leave shoeboxes of fresh grass under their beds for the camels that carry the kings. You never see the camels. You are not supposed to. The magic depends entirely on your willingness to leave the offering and trust that something hungry and magnificent is moving through the dark toward you.
Tres Reinas is a film about that act of faith. It is about the people who keep leaving the grass out even when the world has given them every reason to stop.
My grandfather was a man like that. He was a mechanic who read encyclopedias cover to cover. He built a bustling, successful transmission shop in Canóvanas in the 1980s, sold it to build a restaurant, refused to listen to anyone's business advice, and lost it all. He quietly rebuilt himself in a smaller, humbler garage at the base of the mountain in Cubuy—still dreaming of the restaurant he almost finished the first time. He left the grass out his entire life. He died before I could show him this film. This story is the grass I am leaving out for him.
The radical act of bringing your full self home.
Tres Reinas is a heartfelt, high-energy comedy about what it costs to come home—and what it takes to finally be seen there.
Marisol is a queer Puerto Rican woman in her thirties who has built a full life in San Francisco: she produces drag shows, she has a chosen family she would die for, and she has not been back to Puerto Rico in over a decade.
When a family emergency calls her home to Canóvanas just before Three Kings Day, she brings her three drag performer besties—Valentina, Coco, and Benito—for moral support. The plan is simple: tone it down, survive the visit, and get back to the Bay in one piece. The plan falls apart immediately. Her grandfather Johnny, a stubborn, dreaming, deeply lovable man, has been pouring his life savings into an unfinished restaurant on an empty lot for twenty years. Her mother Ivonne has spent that same time building walls so thick they look like skin. And the town's beloved Three Kings Day festival—the economic and cultural heart of the neighborhood—is about to be shut down by the city. Marisol and her besties do what they do best: they make magic. They transform Johnny's concrete lot into a stage, rally the neighborhood, and throw the most spectacular Three Kings Day celebration Canóvanas has ever seen.
But the real story is what happens in the margins: Johnny and Coco discovering they share the same history of survival and refusal. Valentina finding in Puerto Rico the community she never had. Benito learning that the salsa step he's been avoiding is actually in his body. And Marisol, finally, in fuchsia heels and a handmade crown, standing in front of her mother and refusing to make herself small.
Tres Reinas is To Wong Foo meets The Birdcage & Encanto—a film about the radical act of bringing your full self home, and the discovery that your community has been waiting for exactly that.
The Team
Mariana/MeMeCherry
Executive Producer/Writer/DirectorMeMeCherry (Mariana) is a Bay Area-based filmmaker, producer, podcast host & photographer whose work centers community and joy. TUCKED is her debut short film and the first film production from MeMeCherry Productions, the creative company she founded to develop original work rooted in the Bay Area's underground arts scene.
Executive ProducerMama Celeste
Mama Celeste is an Oakland drag artist, DJ, and community organizer. They are a founder of the Oaklash Drag Festival & founder of Rollin' Homos.
One of the most active figures in Bay Area queer community, Mama Celeste brings warmth, power & deep community roots to everything they touch.
Where it all started… TUCKED
“A queer psychological horror short indie film about drag, labor, passion & survival.”
“OMG it’s so demented and weird I love it!”
-Audience Member, rough cut screening, Oakland 2026
“Such a lil mindfuck”
-Audience Member, rough cut screening, Oakland 2026
“It touches on so many levels for me - I love it”
-Audience Member, rough cut screening, Oakland 2026