Emily Rios stars as Magdalena in Quinceañera, the film that won Sundance’s 2006 dramatic Grand Jury Prize.
Magdalena is a Mexican American teenager whose fifteenth-birthday celebration is the film’s central event. Her preparations expose tensions involving family expectations, religion, sexuality, and the changing Echo Park community around her.
Rios’s performance is the film’s main point of view, keeping the story focused on a young person navigating adulthood rather than presenting the celebration only as a spectacle. The cast also includes Jesse Garcia and Chalo González.
The movie was written and directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland. Along with the Grand Jury Prize, it received the Audience Award in the dramatic competition at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.