Tijuana Makes Me Happy
A boy will do anything to become a man and win the heart of a young sex worker - Even fight his rooster. Every man remembers how hard it is being 14 years old: Your voice is cracking, your hormones ar…
Tijuana Makes Me Happy
A boy will do anything to become a man and win the heart of a young sex worker - Even fight his rooster. Every man remembers how hard it is being 14 years old: Your voice is cracking, your hormones are raging, school is boring, the girl you love is a young prostitute who won't go out with you because you don't have enough cash, so you start smuggling drugs across the border in order to save enough money to buy a rooster so you can enter a cockfight and win her love. It's a tale as old as time itself. Tijuana Makes Me Happy, which won the Grand Jury Prize at this year's Slamdance Film Festival, is both a charming coming-of-age story and a celebration of the most infamous of all Mexican border towns. It's also a subtle criticism of society's lust for money and success and the lengths to which people will go to attain both. For the film's hero, Indio, the city's red-light district is a siren's song of erotic mystery. While just across the border - the "other side," as Tijuanans call it - lies a world of boundless economic possibility. In the middle resides Indio's loyalty to his underemployed but decent father, Jhonny. Which to choose? Which to choose? —Josh Rosenblatt A young man will go to any lengths to make his dream come true in this independent drama from writer and director Dylan Verrechia. Indio is growing up with a poor family in the Mexican border town of Tijuana. Cockfighting is still a popular and lucrative sport in Tijuana, and Indio thinks he has what it takes to train a champion bird. As a present for his fifteenth birthday, Indio asks his father Jhonny to get him a rooster that's up for sale from a local breeder who has helped spawn some winning birds. However, Jhonny can't afford the rooster, and instead buys his son an evening with Brianda, a teenage prostitute. While Indio and Brianda strike up a brief romance, he's not about to give up his ambitions of training a winning rooster, and takes whatever odd jobs he can find to help raise the cash -- everything from washing cars to working as a drug mule. —Mark Deming, New York Times
Tijuana Makes Me Happy
Comedy,Drama,Romance
Film Details
A boy will do anything to become a man and win the heart of a young sex worker - Even fight his rooster. Every man remembers how hard it is being 14 years old: Your voice is cracking, your hormones are raging, school is boring, the girl you love is a young prostitute who won't go out with you because you don't have enough cash, so you start smuggling drugs across the border in order to save enough money to buy a rooster so you can enter a cockfight and win her love. It's a tale as old as time itself.
Tijuana Makes Me Happy, which won the Grand Jury Prize at this year's Slamdance Film Festival, is both a charming coming-of-age story and a celebration of the most infamous of all Mexican border towns. It's also a subtle criticism of society's lust for money and success and the lengths to which people will go to attain both. For the film's hero, Indio, the city's red-light district is a siren's song of erotic mystery.
While just across the border - the "other side," as Tijuanans call it - lies a world of boundless economic possibility. In the middle resides Indio's loyalty to his underemployed but decent father, Jhonny. Which to choose? Which to choose? —Josh Rosenblatt A young man will go to any lengths to make his dream come true in this independent drama from writer and director Dylan Verrechia.
Indio is growing up with a poor family in the Mexican border town of Tijuana. Cockfighting is still a popular and lucrative sport in Tijuana, and Indio thinks he has what it takes to train a champion bird. As a present for his fifteenth birthday, Indio asks his father Jhonny to get him a rooster that's up for sale from a local breeder who has helped spawn some winning birds.
However, Jhonny can't afford the rooster, and instead buys his son an evening with Brianda, a teenage prostitute. While Indio and Brianda strike up a brief romance, he's not about to give up his ambitions of training a winning rooster, and takes whatever odd jobs he can find to help raise the cash -- everything from washing cars to working as a drug mule. —Mark Deming, New York Times.