immigration

Title: El Norte
Released: 1983
Director:: Gregory Nava

Plot Summary

There's a reason your teacher made you watch El Norte in your high school Spanish class: it's a good movie with a thoughtful message. The movie opens in a small village in Guatemala in the early 80s, a time of government oppression, disappearances and torture which started a civil war that wasn't resolved until the early 90s.

After a massacre in their village, siblings Rosa and Enrique decided to flee to the US, el norte, a place they imagine to be as incredible as tv programs and the stories they've heard growing up portray. Their trip is dangerous, and their new life in America isn't quite as they imagined.

The Tortilla Curtain is the story of two couples in Southern California and their contrasting lives. America and Candido have recently crossed the Mexican border in search of a better life for themselves and their soon to be born child. Instead of the panacea they thought they would find, the couple tries to eak out a living working day labor jobs and camping in the bottom of a canyon. An unfortunate event links their lives to those of Delaney, a nature writer, and his wife Kyra, a ambitiously high rolling real estate agent, who live in an exclusive neighborhood.