La jaula de oro
Directed by:
Diego Quemada-DiezCinematography:
María SeccoCast:
Karen Martínez, Brandon López, Rodolfo Domínguez, Carlos Chajon, Héctor Tahuite, Luis Alberti, Ricardo Esquerra, Gilberto Barraza, Juan Carlos MedellinPlots(1)
Juan, Samuel and Sara leave Guatemala hoping for a better life in the US. On their way, they are joined by a Tzotzil indian boy, Chauk. Together, their journey to America will be a dangerous one, joining many others who travel on this infamous route in search of the American Dream. (Peccadillo Pictures)
Reviews (2)
Cultivated and non-pandering, but far from unbiased, hard and free from melodrama (the superfluous motif of snow, lyrical shots from the train, overuse of moving music, inconspicuous adoration of a common community of refugees). It rather resembles a cleverly shot compilation of several similarly tuned images. But it never has the intensity and rawness to bite too deeply a viewer trained in economical Central American films. In any case, Quemada-Diez is a skilled filmmaker, and his debut is sympathetically reminiscent of Fukunaga's Sin Nombre. Compared to Sin Nombre, in this film there is no artificially-built storyline, but The Golden Dream touches on a very similar humanistic ethos.
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A perfect example of a festival art film, i.e., the type of film I was afraid of before I went to Karlovy Vary. It’s an endless road movie with a minimum of words and a repetitive plot. The montage of shots from the front of the train through various landscapes is amazing, whereas the rest is about convincing yourself not to leave the screening.
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