'El Norte'

A beautifully sad and poignant movie that rings incredibly true 25 years later. Maybe more so.

Rosa and Enrique are teenage brother and sister living in the jungles of Guatamala when their father is murdered by government soldiers after plotting to start a union. Later, the mother disappears leaving the pair unattached and afraid in their home country. The pair decide to migrate north into the United States.

Through their trials and tribulations, they wind up in Mexico successfully where they meet their "coyote". They crawl through a drainage pipe to the United States where they are viciously attacked by an army of rats. They eventually make it to the States, they rent an apartment and start working.

Dodging immigration, the pair sink their teeth into the United States, Enrique as a busboy moving up the ranks at a nice restaurant and Rosa as a housekeeper. She contracts typhus from the rat bites while Enrique is offered a good job in Chicago. Before he leaves in the middle of the night, he learns his sister is dying. He leaves the job laying there and sees his sister before she breaths her last death.

It's commentary on immigrants, prejudice and the lose-lose situation for many trying to make a better life for themselves in a country that doesn't really want them, but needs them for their dirty work.