El Norte

El Norte (1983) is a US-Mexican drama you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Gregory Nava and starring Zaide Silvia Gutiérrez and David Villalpando. A brother and sister flee an army massacre in highland Guatemala and push north — through Mexico and into Los Angeles.

Enrique and Rosa Xuncax are young Maya Indians from the village of San Pedro Necta. After soldiers burn their home and kill their father, they join the migrant trail — crawling through a border tunnel, navigating coyotes, landing in a city that has no category for them. In Los Angeles, Enrique washes dishes and Rosa cleans houses. They are undocumented, invisible, and building everything from scratch.

Nava and Anna Thomas' screenplay earned an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay, rare company for a non-studio production. Shot in Spanish, English, and a Mayan language, the film was added to the US National Film Registry in 1995. Quiet, patient, and completely without false comfort — one of the clearest-eyed portraits of the immigrant experience in American cinema. Stream El Norte (1983) online on iFILM.