Quinceañera

Quinceañera

Special guests: Pre-screening conversation with director Wash Westmoreland and actors Emily Rios and Jesse Garcia.

While preparing for her quinceañera, a lavish coming-of-age festivity in Latinx cultures, Magdalena (Emily Rios) discovers she is pregnant. When kicked out of her home, she is taken in by her nurturing great-granduncle Tomas (Chalo González in a heartfelt performance), a beloved street vendor also sheltering her ostracized gay cousin Carlos (Jesse Garcia). Filmmakers Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland were inspired to write the screenplay after attending their neighbor’s quinceañera in Echo Park. While they depict the neighborhood with great love and authenticity, they also exhibit the rapid rise of gentrification that was beginning to affect the predominantly Latinx district in the early aughts.

DIRECTED/WRITTEN BY: Richard Glatzer, Wash Westmoreland. WITH: Emily Rios, Jesse Garcia, Chalo González, Jesus Castaños-Chima. 2006. 90 min. USA. Color. Scope. English, Spanish. DCP.

Academy Museum film programming generously funded by the Richard Roth Foundation. 

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