Mexican films about achieving a dream

A group of Central-American teen-agers depart from the slums of Guatemala City escaping poverty and violence, towards the promised land of California.

The story of a young woman clinging on to her dream to become a beauty contest queen in a Mexico dominated by organized crime.

Tells the "riches to rags" story of the Nobles, three upper-class twenty-somethings that appear to have no limits to their checkbooks, and no direction in their lives. Until one day, their father tries to teach them a lesson by staging a financial scandal that forces the whole family to escape to an old house in the poor side of town, and leads the "kids" to do what they haven't done before: get jobs.

In the Mexican town of Santa Clara, Salma, a 16 year-old orphan who never got to meet her biological parents, has spent most of her life searching for clues of their identities and whereabouts, that is until she discovers a special book that is filled with stories of the town's past and the history of it's people.

Arnulfo Rubio smuggles weapons from Arizona to Mexico for a drug cartel, but he is being investigated by agent Harris. When agent Harris blows his covers, he and Arnulfo end up in a journey where he will be the hostage of this young criminal.

Hypnotic, perturbing, and utterly enthralling, The Untamed combines a suspenseful family drama with truly bizarre elements of science fiction and horror. Desperate to flee but consumed by fear, Alejandra, a young mother and working housewife, is trapped in a violent and unsatisfying relationship with her husband, Angel. She leans on her brother Fabián for support, but he has secrets of his own. All of their lives are turned upside down by the arrival of the mysterious Veronica. She convinces them that in the nearby woods, inside an isolated cabin, dwells something not of this world that could be the answer to all of their problems... something whose force they cannot resist and with whom they must make peace or suffer its wrath.

Nacho Libre is loosely based on the story of Fray Tormenta ("Friar Storm"), aka Rev. Sergio Gutierrez Benitez, a real-life Mexican Catholic priest who had a 23-year career as a masked luchador. He competed in order to support the orphanage he directed.

Scheming of a way to save their father's ranch, the Alvarez brothers find themselves in a war with Mexico's most feared drug lord.

Benjamin Garcia, Benny is deported from the United States. Back home and against a bleak picture, Benny gets involved in the drug business, in which he has for the first time in his life, a spectacular rise surrounded by money, women, violence and fun. But very soon he will discover that criminal life does not always keep its promises.

In 1970s Mexico City, two domestic workers help a mother of four while her husband is away for an extended period of time.

A chronicle of the Cristeros War (1926-1929), which was touched off by a rebellion against the Mexican government's attempt to secularize the country.

With the help of their high school's newest teacher, four Hispanic students form a robotics club. Although they have no experience, the youths set their sights on a national robotics contest. With $800 and parts scavenged from old cars, they build a robot and compete against reigning champion MIT. Along the way, the students learn not only how to build a robot but something far more important: how to forge bonds that will last a lifetime.

The story centers on Charlie, a Los Angeles billionaire financial whiz who goes into self-imposed exile in Tijuana after his empire is revealed to have been a Ponzi scheme. While looking for the woman he abandoned there 25 years before, Charlie is pursued by a Mexican gangster, a federal agent and thugs sent by a former client looking to retrieve his money.

When four women move into an old house left by one woman's aunt, strange things begin to happen. Bizarre voices, visions of ghosts, and mysterious noises lead them to discover the darkest powers of evil and a horror and agony beyond terror.

Eight tales based on the most brutally terrifying Mexican traditions and legends, an anthology of haunting stories woven into the fabric of the Mexican culture, some told through the centuries and some new, but all equally frightening. Bogeymen, trolls, ghosts, monsters, all brought to life. Time for Aztec sacrifices. This is the Day of the Dead.

Alejandra and her dad Roberto have just moved to town. She is new at school, he has a new job. Starting over is sometimes complicated when you have left so much behind.

When Matt Booth sets off to meet his fiance for a foreign wedding he couldn't have imagined the dangerous world he was about to step into. Betrayed and set up, Matt finds himself on the run from the CIA and hired mercenaries, all looking for a package that he has supposedly smuggled through customs. Hunted on all sides, Matt is aided by Agent Adriana Vasquez, a femme fatale with orders of her own to follow.

Maria Laura "Mala" is an actress with little luck, but she is successful working for other women, seducing their boyfriends to know if they are faithful or not. But everything changes when her dream to perform in her acting career depends on a job to be performed with Santiago who breaks the pattern and shakes her professional convictions.

Eve, a young chambermaid at a luxurious Mexico City hotel, confronts the monotony of long workdays with quiet examinations of forgotten belongings and budding friendships that nourish her newfound and determined dream for a better life.

Tequila in Mexico, 1940s: Honor and dignity come first here. The town is protecting a certain secret. In spite of all prohibitions, Antonio, a respected young landowner, has an affair with Lola, his uncle Vicent's young wife. She is sexually dissatisfied from her older husband. Also butler's young daughter Milagros is in love with him and sees him when he leaves Lola's room after they had sex. She threatens him to disclose the secret.

Six years ago NASA discovered the possibility of alien life within our solar system. A probe was launched to collect samples, but crashed upon re-entry over Central America. Soon after, new life forms began to appear and half of Mexico was quarantined as an infected zone. Today, the American and Mexican military still struggle to contain "the creatures," while a journalist agrees to escort a shaken tourist through the infected zone in Mexico to the safety of the U.S. border.

An American businessman with a stake in a pharmaceutical company that's about to go public finds his life is thrown into turmoil by an incident in Mexico.

Set amidst the 1999 student strikes in Mexico City, this coming-of-age tale finds two brothers venturing through the city in a sentimental search for an aging legendary musician. Shot in black-and-white, Güeros brims with youthful exuberance.

A painter from the big city goes to a remote canyon to commit suicide. To reach some calmness he stays at the farmstead of Ascen, an old religious woman. Although only a few words are spoken, love grows.

Quintanilla family was found dead in their country side house. Police reported the existence of 37 hours of recorded evidence. The family traveled to their old farm house, where they investigated about the Legend of the Girl in the Garraf woods. They used to record whatever they did. Atrocious shows the last five days of this family, and the strange situations that they lived in those moments and which remain unexplained.

Teresa flees Mexico after her drug-runner boyfriend is murdered. Settling in Dallas, she looks to become the country's reigning drug smuggler and to avenge her lover's murder.

Leon Alastray is an outlaw who has been given sanctuary by Father John, whom he then escorts to the village of San Sebastian. The village is deserted, with its cowardly residents hiding in the hills from Indians, who regularly attack the village and steal all their supplies. When Father John is murdered, the villagers mistakenly think the outlaw is the priest. Alastray at first tells them he is not a priest, but they don't believe it, and an apparent miracle seems to prove they are correct. Eventually, he assists them in regaining their confidence and defending themselves.

The first of four installments in the groundbreaking Heartbeat of the World anthology film series. Comprised of several short films by some of the world's most exciting directors, Words with Gods follows the theme of religion - specifically as it relates to an individual's relationship with his/her god or gods...or the lack thereof. In Words with Gods, each director recounts a narrative centered around human fragility, as well as environmental and cultural crises involving specific religions with which each has a personal relationship; including early Aboriginal Spirituality, Umbanda, Buddhism, the Abrahamic faiths, Hinduism, and Atheism. An animated sequence by Mexican animator Maribel Martinez is woven through each of the film segments, with each segment narratively connected as a feature-length film.

Juan and his urban family live in the Mexican countryside, where they enjoy and suffer a world apart. And nobody knows if these two worlds are complementary or if they strive to eliminate one another.

Heated tempers, frustrated desires and dashed hopes plague a diverse group of individuals whose lives cross paths in Mexico City. There is the bar-owner's son, Chava, who yearns to emigrate to America. A poor barber, Abel, is madly in love with the gorgeous Alma, who eventually becomes a high-class prostitute. Finally, there is Susanita, the desperate spinster who pursues many love affairs in hopes of finding a husband.

When the boss' unlucky daughter is missing in South America, Campana is sent to watch the boss' most unlucky employee who is sent as a private detective in hopes he can duplicate the daughter's mistakes.

El Topo decides to confront warrior Masters on a trans-formative desert journey he begins with his 6 year old son, who must bury his childhood totems to become a man.

El Mariachi just wants to play his guitar and carry on the family tradition. Unfortunately, the town he tries to find work in has another visitor, a killer who carries his guns in a guitar case. The drug lord and his henchmen mistake el Mariachi for the killer, Azul, and chase him around town trying to kill him and get his guitar case.

When Daniel is possessed by a strange being it tries to bring back from the other world the rest of its companions in the bodies of Ana, Daniel’s wife, and Sebastian, their six year old son. Ana watches in horror as her family is transformed and sees her own possession, and tries to stop the process that seems to be irreversible.

A middle-aged man dies in the street, leaving his widow and three children destitute. The devastated family is confronted not only with his loss but with a terrible challenge - how to survive. For they are cannibals. They have always existed on a diet of human flesh consumed in bloody ritual ceremonies... and the victims have always been provided by the father. Now that he is gone, who will hunt? Who will lead them? How will they sate their horrific hunger? The task falls to the eldest son, Alfredo, a teenage misfit who seems far from ready to accept the challenge... But without human meat the family will die.

A young female FBI agent joins a secret CIA operation to take down a Mexican cartel boss, a job that ends up pushing her ethical and moral values to the limit.

When Cindy decides that she doesn't want to marry her boyfriend, she runs to Mexico City, where new friendships and unexpected paths teach her that there are so much more possibilities on her life and her talent than she imagines.

Against a background of war breaking out in Europe and the Mexican fiesta Day of Death, we are taken through one day in the life of Geoffrey Firmin, a British consul living in alcoholic disrepair and obscurity in a small southern Mexican town in 1939. The Consul's self-destructive behaviour, perhaps a metaphor for a menaced civilization, is a source of perplexity and sadness to his nomadic, idealistic half-brother, Hugh, and his ex-wife, Yvonne, who has returned with hopes of healing Geoffrey and their broken marriage.

Mexico, 1985. Juan and Wilson, two perennial Veterinary students, perpetrate an audacious heist in the National Museum of Anthropology, running away with a loot of more than hundred invaluable pieces of Mayan art, unaware of the consequences of their outrageous act.

A dark fairy tale about a gang of five children trying to survive the horrific violence of the cartels and the ghosts created every day by the drug war.

A group of friends vow to open their college acceptance letters at the same time during the big end-of -year party.

On the surface, Clara Barron seems to have it all: a job as an OB-GYN; a great house in LA; and a loving family. But, the one thing Clara doesn't have figured out is her love life. Pressured by a family wedding in Mexico, Clara asks a co-worker to pose as her boyfriend for the weekend festivities,- only to be caught by surprise when her ex- boyfriend (and family favorite) suddenly shows up after disappearing from her life completely. Torn, Clara must decide between going back to the past or open her heart to new and unexpected possibilities.

Young Claudia works in a supermarket where she promotes various types of products. One night, she ends up in the emergency room with severe appendicitis and meets Martha, a patient, laying in the bed next to hers.

In times of strife it's important to have someone by your side. Whether it is a shoulder to cry on or a source of confidence, an imaginary friend or a distant lover, these six tales from Mexico, Brazil, France the UK and the Netherlands prove that the search for companionship is a journey worth taking.

To a growing number of Mexicans and Latinos in the Americas, narco-traffickers have become iconic outlaws and the new models of fame and success. They represent a pathway out of the ghetto, nurturing a new American dream fueled by the war on drugs. Narco Cultura looks at this explosive phenomenon from within, exposing cycles of addiction to money, drugs, and violence that are rapidly gaining strength on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border

A young American couple in love, Michael and Olivia vacation in Baja, but things take a frightening turn when Olivia is kidnapped by drug dealer, who demands that Michael smuggle a backpack full of cocaine-stolen from a rival cartel-over the border into the U.S. within twelve hours or else Olivia will be killed. A good Tijuana Cop is on the trail, as Michael navigates the treacherous underworld of Mexico, and he himself becomes a force to be reckoned with...

Marcus and Mike are forced to confront new threats, career changes, and midlife crises as they join the newly created elite team AMMO of the Miami police department to take down the ruthless Armando Armas, the vicious leader of a Miami drug cartel.

Tells the parallel stories of nine-year-old Carlitos and his mother, Rosario. In the hopes of providing a better life for her son, Rosario works illegally in the U.S. while her mother cares for Carlitos back in Mexico.

Rosario Tijeras has been abused by men all her life, initially by her stepfather. Years later, she works as a paid assassin, seducing men and killing them when they least expect it. She meets Emilio, a wealthy womanizer, and his best friend, Antonio, at a nightclub, and starts an affair with Emilio despite Antonio's growing feelings for her. But circumstances bring her closer to Antonio, until her past catches up with her in a devastating way.

Medea is expelled from the mining region in the Atacama Desert and is given just one day to disappear. But in that single day, she comes up with a plan for revenge. In order to carry out this plan, which will culminate in her murdering her own son, she invokes her innermost strength, summoning the power of the female gender.