Crossing the U.S. border
illegally comes with its own unique paranoia and feelings of "otherness," but
once immigrants arrive in the States, they can often find strength in numbers,
by nestling into one of the cities-within-cities that exist apart from the
American mainstream. In Christopher Zalla's debut film, Sangre De Mi Sangre, two young Mexicans make
their way to New York City and promptly get swallowed up by a thicket of
ghettos, bodegas, vacant lots, and job sites. One of the boys, Armando Hernández,
tries to get an edge by assuming the identity of the other boy, Jorge Adrian
Espíndola, so he can con his way into the home of Espíndola's father, who's
rumored to be a wealthy restaurant owner. In actuality, the dad (played by Jesús
Ochoa) works in a kitchen, and does odd jobs to make ends meet—not all of
them above-board. And while Ochoa is Espíndola's father, he doesn't remember the boy's
mother all that well, because she was a one-night-stand that occurred under
morally questionable conditions.