78 minutes | USA | 2023

World Premiere: Berlinale Generation 14plus — Winner: Grand Prix for Best Feature Film
U.S./North American Premiere: True/False Film Festival — Opening Night Film

Press: sara@sampsonpr.co
All Other Inquiries: hummingbirdspelicula@gmail.com

LOG LINE: Bordertown besties make magic of one last summer together as they face uncertain futures.

SHORT SYNOPSIS: In Hummingbirds, directors Silvia Del Carmen Castaños and Estefanía “Beba” Contreras tell their own coming-of-age story, transforming their hometown on the Texas-Mexico border into a wonderland of creative expression and activist hijinx. Filmed collaboratively over the final summer of their fleeting youth, their cinematic self-portrait celebrates the power of friendship and joy as tools of survival and resistance. Grand Prize, 2023 Berlinale Generation.

LONG SYNOPSIS: “I want to remember this time, last time, and next time. I want to remember it all with no parts missing, because I appreciate even the bad times.” In Laredo, a city in southern Texas on the Mexican border, best friends Silvia and Beba know that the long summer nights of their youth cannot last forever. Their hang-out spots are so familiar but, stuck in an immigration process over which deportation hangs as a constant possibility, home still seems a fragile concept. Between bars, drive-thrus, friends’ couches and the borderlands, they confront the stresses of survival, the future, and community building. For them, this means protest action for legal abortion and against border control abuses, in a politically divided America. But the dusty half-light is also a time for poetry and dreams. Their laughter and creative expression cement a sense of solidarity and belonging in togetherness.

STATEMENT ON PROCESS: Hummingbirds has been lovingly crafted by a team  of mostly first-time filmmakers with personal connections to the community, identities, and experiences explored in the film. We work in a collaborative apprenticeship model of filmmaking, where artists who are new to nonfiction cinema share responsibilities and credits with more experienced mentors. In this dynamic, the exchange of learning goes both ways. The Hummingbirds team is predominantly Mexican American, Texan, queer, women/non-binary, and Fronterize. We hope that Hummingbirds can be a template for industry access and early career development across all crew positions on documentaries, contributing to a world where more directors, producers, editors, cinematographers, field recordists, colorists, animators, composers, mixers, and sound designers work on films that reflect their own communities, identities, and experiences.

CREDITS:

Directors: Silvia Del Carmen Castaños, Estefanía Contreras
Co-Directors: Jillian Schlesinger, Miguel Drake-McLaughin, Diane Ng, Ana Rodríguez-Falcó
Producers: Jillian Schlesinger, Miguel Drake-McLaughlin, Leslie Benavides, Ana Rodríguez-Falcó, Diane Ng, Rivkah Beth Medow
Co-Producers: Isidore Bethel, Dawn Valadez
Executive Producers: Rivkah Beth Medow, Jen Rainin, Robina Riccitiello, Gill Holland
Cinematography: Miguel Drake-McLaughlin, Diane Ng
Editing: Isidore Bethel, Jillian Schlesinger, Leslie Benavides, Sophia Hernández, Ana Rodríguez-Falcó, Zulema Young-Toledo
Music: Estefanía “Beba” Contreras, Elijah Cruz, Brandan Hoy
Production Sound: Ana Rodríguez-Falcó, Jillian Schlesinger
Post-Production Sound: Danielle Dupre, Kyle O’Neal, Eli Cohn, Charlie Vela, Matt McVinnie
Title Animations: Yensey Murillo
Color: Eyal Dimant, C Diaz

AWARDS:
Grand Prix Best Feature Film, Berlinale Generation 14plus
Best Cinematography, Nevada City Film Festival
Grand Jury Prize, New Hampshire Film Festival
Audience Award Runner-Up, Newfest
Special Mention, Let’s Doc
Best US Latinx Film Nominee, Cinema Tropical Awards

WITH SUPPORT FROM:

PRESS:

”A remarkably vibrant debut that embodies the hopes and dreams of two bright young talents”
”What might seem like ‘random’ goofball stuff at first — singing, making tattoos, playing bingo — coalesces into a portrait of two creatives striving for change”
”A near-perfect time capsule of this one summer…in a space that’s liminal in more ways than one.”
– Indiewire: Critic’s Pick Review: A Buzzing and Vibrant Coming of Age Doc Shot by Two Best Friends in a Texan Border Town

"Not a social issue documentary, at least not directly….the laid-back presentation makes the political commentary register strongly from the periphery."
– New York TImes Critic’s Pick Review: Two Friends’ Summer Along the Border

“A glowing self-portrait of friendship, a call to activism, a summer bestie comedy full of devilish antics, and a frank immigrant story, this bold slice of life defies easy categorization. As Silvia and Beba sing, dance, and make mischief, they seem to be daring you to try and slap a label on them, their challenging circumstances, and the complexities of their border town lives”
-rogerebert.com

"Playful and poetic”
“Something serious, vibrant and compelling courses through the levity”
”Has the sheen of summertime fun and the bright energy of creative focus for besties who are smart and terrifically likable.”
”Daring”
– The Hollywood Reporter ‘Hummingbirds’ Review: Border-Town Besties’ Inspired Self-Portrait

“To watch Hummingbirds is to consider the pantheon of great movies about dynamic duos of young female friends in all their love and anarchy, whether it’s Daisies or Ghost World. The DNA of those subversive classics abides in this stirringly independent production, in which a pair of young Mexican women—Estefanía “Beba” Contrera and Silvia Del Carmen Castaños—capture their own misadventures together over the course of a few months in 2019, living in the Texas border town of Laredo under the shadow of American immigration bureaucracy”
”Effervescent, fuck-you joy that feels contagious.”
The emotions that arise here from various candid experiences are the engine that drives this border-town buddy movie, full of hopes, dreams and resilience.”
– Fandor Keyframe

“A vibrant, infectious and surprisingly hopeful portrait”
"Voices don't come much more authentic than these besties"
"Sparky, self-confident, and unafraid"
"Personalities are allowed to shine as bright as the issues, making the film all the more immediate and powerful as a result.”
– Screen Daily

"An unorthodox, punk rock portrait of the immigrant experience"
“A refreshing coming-of-age story"
– The Moveable Fest

“mischievous and meaningful”
“the best movie I’ve seen about growing up on the border”
– Texas Monthly ‘Hummingbirds’ Is a Radical Border Documentary—One That’s Fun to Watch

“It speaks to the fearlessness of today’s youth having everything to lose and still being loud and proud within an environment overrun by border patrol and Christo-fascist white nationalists. Having each other allows them the courage to be themselves.”
– Hey, Have You Seen?

“a rich portrait of two young [friends] for whom the notion of home is a fragile, tenuous concept”
“Provides a welcome and necessary corrective to the sensationalist headlines of popular media depicting the border as a site of constant chaos and unregulated immigration”
"Offers up a new and potentially invigorating model for collaborative, mentorship-based filmmaking while depicting [a] shared summer of mischief, allyship, and activism”
– Film Obsessive Review: Hummingbirds Takes a New Approach to the Coming of Age Film

"If you combined the anarchic feminist energy of Věra Chytilová’s Daisies with the ironic attitude of Terry Zwigoff’s Ghost World and add the loose hangout vibes of Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, you might get something close to Hummingbirds, a delightfully feisty portrait of the friendship between two Mexican-American teens (one undocumented, the other not) in Laredo, Texas the summer after they graduate high school…Silvia and Estefanía are human fireworks who you’ll fall in love with from the film’s first seconds.”
”Perfectly captures the spontaneous joy and lazy, meandering conversations of warm summer nights in young adulthood”
– The Pitch Best Films We Saw at True/False

“Hummingbirds offers a potent portrait of the struggles of growing up in a border town like Laredo, while still finding moments of joy in the fleeting transitional days of summer.”
– St. Louis Magazine

“What’s your favorite film so far?” is a common conversation starter at film festivals. Hummingbirds was the answer I heard most often at True/False, frequently followed by, “it really feels like you’re hanging out with them.”
- Redefine 2023 True/False Film Picks

"Definitely a highlight for the festival" (NR)
"A joyous experience" (EH)
– The Last Thing I Saw (Nicolas Rapold podcast feat. Eric Hynes) 2:40 - 7:28

"If people want to see a throughline of my programming taste and aesthetic and the kind of work that I love to champion, go see ‘Hummingbirds,' [True/False co-founder David Wilson] said."
– Columbia Tribune As True/False marks 20 years, festival vets look back on defining films

Featured in Screen Slate’s True/False 2023 Round-up

One of The Guardian’s Best of This Year’s True/False Documentary Festival

”Magical”
”In mood, the film evokes variously Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused (1993) and Terry Zwigoff’s Ghost World (2001). But these two young women also engage with substantive political issues, though in a playfully subversive way, as when they disguise themselves, sneak onto someone’s yard, and alter the message of an antiabortion sign. Their film serves up the kind of wise-beyond-their-years insights into the nature of time, memory, and experience seen in Charlotte Wells’s much-lauded Aftersun (2022).”
- The Arts Fuse

”In their case youth is not wasted on the young, and in their delightful cinematic collaboration we follow along with great interest, buoyed by their infectious joie de vivre. Summer has rarely seemed so simultaneously laid-back and vibrant.”
- Hammer To Nail

”For a touching and subtle glimpse into the intimate moments of memorable characters that grow within their friendship. Their self-determination and playfulness, as both protagonists and authors, is inspiring. Their actions, jokes, songs, laughs, and bodies are political and necessary as a way of resistance.”
– Berlinale Generation International Jury statement Grand Prix Award for Best Feature Film

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