The 2006 film about a Los Angeles teenager that won both major jury and audience prizes at Sundance is “Quinceañera.”
Written and directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, the independent film follows Magdalena, a teenager whose fifteenth-birthday celebration becomes complicated by family conflict and an unexpected pregnancy. Emily Rios plays Magdalena, with Jesse Garcia and Chalo González in prominent roles.
At the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, the film won the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award in the Dramatic Competition. Those prizes helped draw attention to its portrayal of a Mexican American family in Los Angeles and to its independent production.
The film’s title refers to the cultural celebration, but the story is not a documentary about quinceañera customs. It is a fictional drama that uses the event as the setting for questions about family, identity, sexuality, religion, and community.