Erika Sabel Flores
While serving a 33-year sentence, a spiritual awakening led drug lord Esteban Mendoza Cruz to form a church in Mexico’s most corrupt prison. With a congregation of more than 600, Cruz sows hope both among inmates and in the community at large.
After crossing into the U.S. with no family to speak of, young Cecilia finds herself in the charge of Francisco, a lonely Cuban immigrant long separated from his own family. Francisco operates a way station for border crossers on the outskirts of Lake Los Angeles, a surreal, desiccated lakebed in the California desert. While he copes with the alienation of living alone in a foreign land and the impossibility of realizing the American dream, Cecilia aimlessly wanders the dusty landscape, accompanied only by her fantastical imagination and distant memories of motherly love.