Quinceañera

Magdalena, the daughter of a Mexican-American family, falls pregnant months before her fifteenth birthday and it is only a matter of time before her religious father finds out and rejects her. Winner of the John Cassavetes Award at the Independent Spirit Awards as well as the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival., As Magdalena’s 15th birthday approaches, her simple, blissful life is complicated by the discovery that she’s pregnant. Kicked out of her house, she finds a new family with her great-granduncle and gay cousin., A Hispanic teenager travels the rough road to adult responsibility earlier than she expected in this independent drama. Magdalena (Emily Rios) is a young Latina who is looking forward to her upcoming quinceañera celebration — the 15th birthday party that marks the passage into adulthood for Mexican-American women. Magdalena’s expectations are raised by the lavish party her older cousin Eileen (Alicia Sixtos) gets for the occasion, but Magdalena’s mother (Araceli Guzman-Rico) and father (Jesus Castanos-Chima) insist on a lower-key affair that will focus on the more responsible aspects of grown-up life. However, Magdalena gets a crash course in that subject when she discovers she’s pregnant with the child of her boyfriend, Herman (J.R. Cruz); life at home becomes unbearable for her, and she leaves to live with her more sympathetic uncle, Tio Thomas (Chalo Gonzalez). Home for Tio Thomas and Magdalena is a small apartment in a building owned by James (Jason L. Wood) and Gary (David W. Ross), a gay couple looking to gentrify the neighborhood. Magdalena strikes up a friendship with her cousin Carlos (Jesse Garcia), a roughneck teen with a good heart who is also on the outs with his family when they discover he’s experimenting with his sexuality. Produced in part by Todd Haynes, Quinceañera received its premiere at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival., A bravura performance by young Emily Rios as a 14-year-old Mexican-American on the cusp of womanhood adds luster to this insightful slice of life about cultures clashing in the gentrifying Latino neighborhood of Echo Park in Los Angeles. Jesse Garcia costars as her gangbanging cousin wrestling with his sexuality, and Chalo Gonzalez (who got his film start in “The Wild Bunch”) plays their uncle. Written and directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, who make their home in Echo Park., Insightful slice of life about cultures clashing in a gentrifying Latino neighbourhood in Los Angeles.