Cesar Chavez

Cesar Chavez (2014) is a biographical drama directed by Diego Luna — watch online on iFILM. Michael Peña plays the California labor organizer who turned a grape boycott into one of the most consequential civil-rights campaigns of the 1960s.

The film follows Chavez as he co-founds the United Farm Workers with Dolores Huerta (Rosario Dawson) and goes up against grower Richard Ethan Barr (John Malkovich), who has money and patience on his side. Strikes, hunger strikes, and a nationwide consumer boycott are Chavez's tools — and America Ferrera plays his wife Helen, absorbing the cost of a cause that swallows everything around it. Peña plays him softly on purpose: the quiet is the point.

Luna, himself Mexican, shot in both languages and kept the cultural specificity intact. The film runs 102 minutes and spends them on the mechanics of organizing rather than hagiography — Chavez as a man with a method, not a legend. Stream Cesar Chavez online on iFILM.