América

Mar 1, 2018

1h 15m

★ 8.5

Overview

This sparkling, irreverent, and deeply emotional piece of creative nonfiction announces the arrival of a standout filmmaking partnership. When their father is hauled away, a colorful trio of brothers — a sibling team to rival Moe, Larry, and Curly — step up to take care of América, their grandmother, in Colima, Mexico. Rodrigo, Diego, and Bruno are stilt-walkers and acrobats and Elvis impersonators and unicycle riders — when not running the family's agriculture warehouse. With a loose, offhanded charm, Stoll and Whiteside capture the family’s natural performative streak in a way that makes even the most explosive, dramatic moments feel organic. The endearing, genuine scenes between Diego and his grandmother celebrate the possibility of multigenerational connection.

Genres

Documentary

Production Companies

Lifelike Docs

América Trailers

Cast

No Cast found.

What’s it like to age with early-phase vascular dementia? And how about your loved ones? Successful author Heleen van Royen has taken on caring for her elderly mother and films their frequent meetings. Increasingly, Mrs Breed’s life consists of confusion and unbearable stabbing pains that she tames with a mantra. She regularly refuses help, good advice and a Zimmer frame, although she is also thankful for her committed daughter’s support.

0.0

Songs of Injustice: Heavy Metal Music in Latin America

Dec 13, 2018

In this documentary film a team of researchers examine the social contexts that influenced the emergence and permanence of heavy metal music in Chile, Argentina, Mexico and Peru. Colonialism, dictatorships, terrorism and neoliberal exploitation serve as points of reference for how heavy metal in the region has been directly linked to each country's social and political context.

0.0

Viacrucis Migrante

Jan 25, 2017

A documentary film about men, women, and children fleeing northward from the existential threats in their home countries of Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. They embark on a perilous journey with an uncertain outcome. Shortly after crossing the southern Mexican border, they find shelter with people who want to help them survive the ordeal of the at least 1,700-kilometer journey to the US.

6.2

Meth Storm

Mar 11, 2017

As police and DEA agents battle sophisticated cartels, rural, economically-disadvantaged users and dealers–whose addiction to ICE and lack of job opportunities have landed them in an endless cycle of poverty and incarceration–are caught in the middle.

7.0

Takeda

Oct 21, 2017

Takeda is a film about the universality of the human being seen thru the eyes of a Japanese painter that has adopted the Mexican culture.

5.0

Thunder Over Mexico

Sep 22, 1933

As was common in Diaz's Mexico, a young hacienda worker finds his betrothed imprisoned and his life threatened by his master for confronting a hacienda guest for raping the girl. This film is the first of several attempts to make a feature-length motion picture out of the 200,000-plus feet of film shot by Sergei Eisenstein, on photographic expedition in Mexico during 1931-32 for Upton Sinclair and a cadre of private American producer-investors. Silent with music and English intertitles.

0.0

Muerte es Vida (Death is Life)

Oct 8, 2016

Monarch butterflies have brought hope to the darkest times of people's lives. In Mexico, when they arrive for Day of the Dead, they are thought to be souls of the departed. Coincidence?

9.0

Jaripeo

Jan 25, 2026

Set against the vibrant spectacle of the jaripeo, a symbol of Mexican cowboy tradition and machismo, this story unveils a hidden world of queer desire and quiet rebellion. As glances and gestures disrupt the rigid norms of masculinity, the rodeo becomes a stage for our protagonists to navigate identity, community, and the search for belonging in an oppressively traditional space.

6.9

Chavela

Jun 16, 2017

Inspired by an exclusive interview and performance footage of Chavela Vargas shot in 1991 and guided by her unique voice, the film weaves an arresting portrait of a woman who dared to dress, speak, sing, and dream her unique life into being.

6.7

Old Thieves: The Legend of Artegio

Mar 15, 2007

Is the story of a generation of thieves who achieved their greatest victories in the sixties; their distinctive code of ethics, the various categories of delinquents inhabiting the citys streets, their alliances with high ranking police officials that allowed them to operate, the betrayals that followed, and the price they ended up paying.

7.4

Chuy, The Wolf Man

Sep 25, 2015

Jesus 'Chuy' Aceves and a dozen living members of his extended family suffer from the very rare condition of congenital hypertrichosis, meaning they were born with excessive hair on their faces and bodies. Due to their appearance, they suffer from discrimination in all areas of their lives: the children are made fun of at school and abandoned by their 'non-hairy' parents, and the adults cannot find work unless they choose to exhibit themselves as freaks in circuses. This moving and visually arresting documentary is a portrait of Chuy and his family members. It examines their day-to-day lives and their struggle to find love, acceptance and employment.

5.0

Separated

Oct 4, 2024

Academy Award®-winning filmmaker Errol Morris confronts one of the darkest chapters in recent American history: family separations. Based on NBC News Political and National Correspondent Jacob Soboroff’s book, Separated: Inside an American Tragedy, Morris merges bombshell interviews with government officials and artful narrative vignettes tracing one migrant family’s plight. Together they show that the cruelty at the heart of this policy was its very purpose. Against this backdrop, audiences can begin to absorb the U.S. government’s role in developing and implementing policies that have kept over 1300 children without confirmed reunifications years later, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

0.0

Little Birds

Jun 19, 2023

Through dances and games, migrant boys and girls who live in a shelter in Reynosa, on the US-Mexico border, shared their dreams and stories of hope with us.

0.0

Copal Dreams

Jun 5, 2019

The communities of San Martin Tilcajete and San Antonio Arrazola in Oaxaca, Mexico are best known for being the main source of the "Alebrijes" (wood carving) in the state; a relatively new but powerful tradition in mexican folklore. In both communities, there is a family that claims they're father started this tradition in all the state of Oaxaca.

7.2

My Life Inside

Jan 16, 2007

Rosa is a Mexican woman who, at the age of 17, migrated illegally to Austin, Texas. Some years later, she was jailed under suspicion of murder and then taken to trial. This film demonstrates how the judicial process, the verdict, the separation from her family, and the helplessness of being imprisoned in a foreign country make Rosa’s story an example of the hard life of Mexican migrants in the United States.

No Image Available

0.0

Oaxaca - Zwischen Rebellion und Utopie

Jan 1, 2007

No overview available.

7.0

Paulette

Feb 19, 2021

A short documentary following Paulette Harwood, a 90-year-old former Radio City Music Hall Corps de Ballet soloist, as she teaches the final classes in a school she's run for sixty years.

0.0

Exotic Mexico

Jun 13, 1942

This Traveltalk short visits southern Mexico.

8.0

Merida and Campeche

Nov 24, 1945

This Traveltalk series short visits two of the most important cities on Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula.

0.0

Zapatista Women

Jan 1, 1995

April 1994 in the Lacandona Jungle, Chiapas, México. The Zapatista women talk about the living conditions of Mexican indigenous populations and the life of peasant women. They explain the reasons for their struggle and their uprising.