WE ARE MARI PEPA (SOMOS MARI PEPA) New Auteurs

Alex has big plans for his summer in Guadalajara. He hopes to get a girlfriend, make money with a new job, learn a new song with his band, Mari Pepa, and win the upcoming ”battle of the bands” concert. His summer expectations quickly become impossible to fulfill as he realizes everything in his life is shifting. Increasingly worried about his deteriorating grandmother, Alex realizes he must learn to deal with loneliness and begin to say goodbye to his innocence. Armed with a full cast of local untrained actors and based on the director/writer’s personal memories, SOMOS MARI PEPA is a love letter to, and a voyage through, the alleys and garages of Atemajac, Jalisco. Establishing director Samuel Kishi Leopo as a new, exciting voice in independent Mexican cinema, the film skillfully and comically captures the breakdown of adolescent rebellion in a period in which boys are forced to become men.