Quinceañera

Everyone and everything are in transition in this second film by life partners Wash Westmoreland and Richard Glatzer. Newcomer Emily Rios stars as Magdalena, a 14-year-old Mexican-American girl in Echo Park, Los Angeles, who is preparing for her culture’s biggest coming-of-age moment: a quinceañera. However, the young Catholic teen is transitioning into womanhood in another, more universal way: She’s pregnant. Because of this, her strict, religious father makes her move out and, consequentially, in with her 83-year-old bachelor uncle in a small backyard shack. There she meets her cousin, Carlos, another exiled relative banished for his homosexuality. Meanwhile, the neighborhood itself is undergoing a transition by means of gentrification thanks to an affluent white gay couple who has recently bought the small backyard home of outcasts. Winner of the Audience Award and Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Quinceañera is a hidden gem that should not be overlooked.