What is the cost of the American Dream? Filmmaker Eddie Sanchez sets out to better understand his parents, Lalo and Beby, in this astonishing debut feature documentary, providing a unique, complex and emotionally resonant visual answer to that question. Expertly merging original interviews with the two as they discuss their courtship, their journey to the United States and what their lives were like once they arrived, including the VHS home movies Lalo and Beby once sent over the border as a means of “visiting” the family members they couldn’t physically be with, Mexicanamerican is a decade-spanning collage exploring the cultural and emotional cost of migration. 

This poignant and affecting documentary stands not only as a love letter to those whose sacrifices often go unknown and unnoticed but also as a reckoning of what is lost when we don’t ask questions.—Faridah Gbadamosi