Salma Hayek is the star of a new dark comedy scheduled for release this month, “Beatriz at Dinner.”
The film, which tackles hot topics around U.S. immigration, follows on the heels of a whole galaxy of recent movies that zoom in on Mexican and Central American migration to the United States. Here are six of the best examples of the migrant film genre.
Beatriz at Dinner (2017)
The latest film on Hispanic immigration breaks taboos on the growing political divide in the United States.
Beatriz (Salma Hayek) is a new-age holistic medicine practitioner who is invited to dinner after her car breaks down on a visit to one of her well-to-do patients in California. But it is no ordinary evening: the family is celebrating a business deal with a wealthy real-estate mogul, Doug (John Lithgow).
The two guests could not be more at odds and the dialogue soon catches fire. As night falls and the wine flows, Beatriz and Doug are increasingly at each other’s throats on environmental, corporate and immigration issues.
Miguel Arteta’s film “goes beyond this political moment,” says Hayek. “I think it speaks about the perspectives in America, two completely different views that are not able to communicate very well right now.”
Instructions not Included (2013)
Some films take a lighthearted approach to immigration. In this production by Eugenio Derbez, Valentin enjoys his life as a carefree ladies’ man in Acapulco. But when a former lover brings him a baby and disappears, Valentin’s reality changes. Dumbfounded, he crosses the U.S. border with the baby in his arms to search for the mother in Los Angeles — but she is nowhere to be found. As an undocumented immigrant, Valentin has to take up odd jobs to care for the child in the United States.
This Mexican comedy reached US$44 million at the box office in Hollywood, which makes it the highest-grossing Mexican movie in the United States Derbez explains that the movie has a different take on Mexican immigration. Usually, “watching a Mexican movie meant watching pain and poverty,” he says, but this film “gives a face to migrants and show that we are not all rapists or drug traffickers.”
Soy Nero (2016)
This politically-engaged drama tackles the fate of 8.5 percent of the U.S. military known as the “green card soldiers,” whose life after service is often uncertain.
Nero (Johnny Ortiz) is a 19-year-old Mexican who dreams of becoming a United States citizen. After being deported to Mexico, he re-enters the U.S. illegally and decides to join the army, a shortcut to citizenship. Nero is immediately sent to serve in the Middle East, but when his patrol comes under attack, he is trapped in a series of events that might blow his hopes of attaining the citizenship he longs for.
The film, directed by Iranian director Rafi Pitts, was inspired by the real story of Daniel Torres, who gave technical advice on set.
The Golden Dream (2013)
Juan, Sara, and Samuel are U.S.-bound migrants from Guatemala who embark on a dangerous journey through Mexico. They are later joined by Chauk, a Mayan boy who speaks the indigenous language Tzotzil. The four teens quarrel, form bonds and risk their lives along the railroad tracks in the hopes of a better life in the United States.
“The Golden Dream” is a poetic and gripping road movie by Diego Quemada-Diez. As research for the film, the Spanish-born Mexican director rode La Bestia, the network of cross-country freight trains used by migrants to cross Mexico. He also hired real migrants as actors and listened to 600 testimonials of people fleeing Central America.
The film received lavish praise from Cannes Jury members in 2013.
Desierto (2016)
This fast-paced thriller tells the story of a group of migrants’ struggle for survival on the U.S.-Mexican border.
The migrants must not only make it through the unforgiving desert wasteland; they also have to dodge desert vigilante Jeffrey’s bullets. Jeffrey’s goal is simple: to mercilessly take border security into his own hands.
This thriller by the Mexican filmmakers of “Gravity,” Jonás Cuarón and his father Alfonso Cuarón, has a strong political message. The international trailer features the audio of U.S. President Trump’s campaign speech accusing Mexicans of being “drug dealers, criminals and rapists.” During the press conference, Jonás Cuarón asked Mexican cinema-goers to take to social media and share ironic photos of themselves holding placards with the words “rapist,” “criminal,” or “I’m bringing drugs.”
The Girl (2012)
This thriller, starring Abbie Cornish, portrays the bonds that can form between people on both sides of the border.
The film opens in Texas, where an impoverished mother, Ashley, is about to lose her son to social services because of her drunk driving. To earn more money, she starts smuggling a group of migrants across the U.S.-Mexican border. But the entire group is tragically swept away in the torrents of the Rio Grande, except for one little girl. Ashley must make hard decisions about what to do with the girl as she makes her way through a trying journey into Mexico.
“It’s an American’s journey into Mexico and how Mexico changes her life,” says Cornish. “The richness, the culture and the differences… how that brings light, hope and something that’s so precious, invaluable and priceless into her life.”