RODRIGO REYES
Lupe Under the Sun
Apr. 21 2020
Virtual Event
RODRIGO REYES | Rodrigo Reyes is an award-winning, Mexican-American filmmaker whose work has screened in nearly 50 film festivals around the world, including the LA Film Festival, Guadalajara International Film Festival and Documentary Fortnight at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, garnering rave reviews in the New York Times, Variety and other media outlets, as well as multiple awards. Named one of the 25 New Faces of Independent Film by Filmmaker Magazine, in 2016 he was chosen as a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow at MacDowell Colony and in 2017 he was selected for the National Mediamaker Fellowship by the Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC). His work has received the support of Tribeca Film Institute, Sundance Institute, California Humanities Council Film Independent, IFP Narrative and Documentary Labs, and the Mexican Film Institute. In 2017, he was named a Guggenheim Fellow. Lupe Under the Sun is his first narrative feature.
LUPE UNDER THE SUN | Long estranged from his family in Mexico, migrant laborer Lupe finds relief from the backbreaking work of harvesting peaches in California’s Central Valley through beer-drenched camaraderie and a quiet love affair with fellow immigrant Gloria. Soon the stability of his daily routine begins to crack under the weight of a life scarred with regret and missed opportunities, as he tries to do everything he can to go home one last time before it is too late.
In this, his first narrative feature, director Rodrigo Reyes plays with the limits between fiction and documentary, working with non-professional actors, real Mexican farmworkers living in the heart of California, to tell a moving drama about the nostalgia and heartbreak that live on the margins of the American Dream.