The Golden Dream

Dir: Diego Quemada-Diez

2013

*****

Diego Quemada-Diez is better known for his work as a cinematographer, The Golden Dream is his feature debut as a director, and what a debut it was. The film shares its title with the 1983 song by Mexican-born Enrique Franco, who sung about the challenges of US immigration. There was a similar film made in 1987 that also took inspiration from Franco’s song that was about a successful and middle-aged Mexican immigrant. Quemada-Diez’s film on the other hand deals with younger, undocumented immigrants in the here and now. A very different story and one with a brutally real unhappy ending. Samuel (Carlos Chajon), Sara (Karen Noemí Martínez Pineda) and Juan (Brandon López), three teenagers from Guatemala, decide to leave poverty by going to the United States. After crossing the Mexican border by boat, they find another immigrant, a Tzotzil native called Chauk (Rodolfo Domínguez) who does not know Spanish but is able to befriend Sara. When they arrive in the town of Chiapas, they busk for money to eat and drink but are later caught by Mexican Immigration Police agents, who steal Juan's boots and threaten Chauk with a gun, before deporting all of them back to Guatemala. They are deposited by the border to Mexico and so they are able to easily find a way back across it, but at this point Samuel decides to stay in Guatemala as he feels the risks just aren’t worth it. Juan dislikes the idea of going with Chauk after taking an instant dislike to him, but Sara forces him to go on with him and the three continue on the road to the north. While riding on a train to northern Mexico, the train is stopped by the Mexican Army who attempt to capture the immigrants. The trio manage to escape and are offered refuge and work by a nearby sugar-cane farmer. During a party at the plantation, the three of them drink and dance until Sara and Juan begin kissing, and end up leaving Chauk alone. The next morning Chauk feels betrayed by Sara, but decides to remain with them and continue the ride to the north. During the trip, they are detained by drug traffickers, who steal the belongings of the passengers and kidnap the females. Sara, who has dressed as a boy the entire journey, is soon recognized as a girl and is taken by the traffickers. When Juan and Chauk resist and try to help Sara both are beaten and knocked unconscious. Chauk wakes up and tends to Juan's injuries. When Juan recovers, both recognize that they can do nothing for Sara and decide to continue their voyage to the north. During the next train ride, they meet a teenager from Guatemala that offers them jobs, but in reality it is just a trick and the boy delivers them into the hands of a group of criminals. When the leader learns that Juan is from his same hometown, Juan is released. Juan later returns and offers the leader the American Dollars he had saved before the journey, in order to free Chauk. His offer is accepted but at a huge risk and they both flee as quickly as they can. Juan and Chauk finally arrive in Mexicali, where they get help from a group of immigrant traffickers to cross the border between Mexico and United States. The traffickers take the boys across the border but leave the two on their own in the desert. They’ve made it. However, immigrant hunters are hiding in the hills and Chauk is shot dead by a sniper. Juan runs for his life and arrives in an alien world, without the happiness he thought he would feel. He soon gets a job in a meat factory with many other immigrants. The movie ends with Juan looking up at snow falling in the night sky, he remembers a conversation Chauk tried to have with him during their journey (they spoke different languages and did not understand each other) and he realises that Chauk had wanted to come north to see snow for the first time. It’s heart-rending but life-affirming stuff. I think the fact that Diego Quemada-Diez worked so long as a cinematographer he knew the importance of the journey. We travel the hundreds of miles with the four friends, the film is long because it needs to show each and every dusty road and every single rail track along the way. The film isn’t political, it merely shows the very real risks involved that poor people endure in want for a better life. It’s not a greed that fuels these people but access to a just and fair life. It makes you wonder if the life is that much better, whether the golden dream is actually that golden. The heart-breaking element of the film is that much of what happens is based on several true incidents. The American dream seems to only work for those who already had it, those who never had to dream of it in the first place thanks to their elders who were also immigrants. The hypocrisy still sickens me. Diego Quemada-Diez’s film is beautiful and as brutal as it needed to be. The four young actors are superb and the film is a masterpiece, but it is also so much more than that. It is a must see film, something that should be shown in schools and the sort of film angry old white men will tell you is wrong – which should tell you the opposite.