‘Mosquita y Mari’

Two 15-year-old Chicanas in Huntingtonn Park, Calif., grapple with their sexual and cultural identities. 2012

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Aurora Guerrero, director: I wanted to capture the ways in which children of immigrants navigate their identities while growing up in the States. As a kid I rarely saw my experience reflected onscreen and if I did there was always a rejection of one’s immigrant parent’s culture, as if that was important to becoming fully American. But what I felt growing up was the opposite. It was the fusions of these two cultures that made for a unique and powerful expression. My goal was to paint a complex portrait of two Chicanas who struggle to negotiate their parent’s dreams for them, rooted in the idea of the American dream, and their own experiences with growing up Brown and queer in this country.