Entre Nos revolves around a mother, Mariana (Paola Mendoza, Sangre De Mi Sangre), taking care of her two kids, 10-year-old Gabriel (Sebastian Villada Lopez) and 6-year-old Andrea (Laura Montana Cortez) all by herself in Colombia while their father tries to find work in the united states. It won the Heartland Film Festival Crystal Heart Award in 2009. Eventually, the family is located in New York City, where the Father informs them that he has to go to Miami for work right away, which does not include wife and kids.
With Mariana and the children having only $50 in a foreign country with no plans, it’s clear they have been left with no options. Mariana’s first resort is to peddle Empanadas on the street while looking for menial jobs that allow her to tend to her children. After losing their first apartment, the family is left with no choice but to sell whatever they can find on the street in order to get by.
Based on a true story of Paola’s mother when she came to America, the film, Entre Nos, is beautifully exhibited to show the love and sacrifice a family gives to one another during the most testing times of their lives. With the help of the film, we can deeply understand the illusions surrounding the term American Dream and the diversity this country is built upon. During the time in which people who do not speak English are targeted, the film serves as a reminder of how powerful the American dream is.
With its Crystal Heart Award, Entre Nos also received Honorable Mention at the Tribeca Film Festival alongside winning Audience Award For Best Narrative Feature at Newport International Film Festival. It partook in a lot of other film festivals all around the globe too. The film is a personal project of Mendoza Maria and co writer and director Gloria la Morte who previously collaborated with him on the documentary Autumn’s Eyes. It highlights her experiences when she with her mother entered the nation.
Mendoza puts forth an emotionally charged performance in which she portrays a young mother with limited English proficiency, who has to raise her children single handedly in a place that always seems foreign even to its natives. Similarly, the child actors who portray her children, Sebastian Villeda Lopez and Laura Montana Cortez, convincingly and maturely depict young kids that in dire need of inventive and sometimes painful ways to survive their grim situations.
As an award winning piece of the Heartland Film Festival, the movie adequately prepares its audience to experience a moving picture that praises the envolving mankind. And yes, “Entre Nos” not only tells but shows how sightless hope helps a family work together to survive while building a community and inspiring each other.
The script for “Entre Nos” came to fruition after Mendoza spoke to her mother asking questions she had never posed. Mendoza did her homework with her mother, and afterwards sought her permission to make the movie which her mother gladly provided. Mendoza began collaborating with La Morte and within a span of two years, the trio had written the script and earned the Panasonic Digital Filmmakers Award from Independent Film Week. They were also accepted into the Tribeca All Access Program. These achievements opened the doors for the partners to acquire the cameras and equipment that were required to actualize “Entre Nos.”
**Entre Nos** was wonderfully crafted and has a few melodramatic moments that feel too private and personal. One cannot deny that Mendoza did an incredible job telling the story of her mother through the lenses of a daughter, filmmaker and an actress. While she was not very successful in many things she attempted to weave together these three parts which forms the cinematic world of Entre Nos. This cross section gives the film a lot of its soul in the same way the magnificent and underrated Innocent Voices does.
Entre Nos is one of the films that can comfortably claim a rest spot in your mind which, along with its elegant video and narration, will be one of the gentle beauties of the 2009 Heartland Film Festival. Right after the Thank You credits roll.
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