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Join Us Cinematic depictions of the Mexico-US border tend to be justifiably harrowing ( Identifying Features , 2022) or unremittingly bleak ( Sin Nombre , 2009); portrayals of poor and working-class Americans — from Erin Brockovich to Monster to, yes, the insufferable Hillbilly Elegy — tend to sentimentalize or stigmatize their subjects as heroes or villains. Onscreen representation of working-class, fronterize teenagers is virtually nonexistent unless the youth in question is fleeing their country. In the age of detention centers and bipartisan border panic, ebullience and silliness in this region might seem to be far-flung fantasies, adolescence a mere pitstop on route to a life of economic and cultural struggle.
Thank goodness, then, for Silvia Del Carmen Castaños and Estefanía “Beba” Contreras, the infectious duo behind Hummingbirds , a fronterize coming-of-age documentary as full of whimsy and joy as it is packed with clear-eyed .