Varsity 1 Monday, April 16, 2018 - 12:00 PM

América

América / While I yet Live

Documentary Feature

76 minutes

2018

Director(s): Erick Stoll & Chase Whiteside

USA

Synopsis

Oregon Premiere

Diego, a stilt walker in a Mexican tourist town, returns home after his 93-year-old grandmother, América, falls out of bed. Reunited with his circus performer brothers, Rodrigo and Bruno, the three young men try to rehabilitate their grandmother and free their father after he was unfairly jailed for elder neglect. Diego is a dreamer who sees poetry and purpose in this crisis. He believes América, despite her immobility and advanced dementia, fell willfully, to reunite the separated family. But Diego’s dream of family cohesion is challenged when the brothers clash over money, communication, and the weight of caring for América full-time. This remarkably intimate documentary brings us all a little closer to what it takes to care for our loved ones. Subtitles

Directors’ Statement

Before we met América, we were looking for stories in Mexico that illuminated the rich and contradictory relationship it shares with the United States. We imagined a film about borders, tourism, and inequality—concepts in keeping with the issue-focused shorts we’d made prior. The idea that we would end up spending years following a family of three brothers taking care of their grandmother in a small city in southwestern Mexico was inconceivable. But upon witnessing the special relationship between Diego and his grandmother, we were moved to commit ourselves to telling this story of family and conflict, life and death— in some ways a smaller film than we had planned, in others much bigger.