Tijuana Makes Me Happy (2007)

Every man remembers how hard it is being 14 years old: Your voice is cracking, your hormones are raging, school is boring, the girl you love is a young prostitute who won't go out with you because you don't have enough cash, so you start smuggling drugs across the border in order to save enough money to buy a rooster so you can enter a cockfight and win her love. It's a tale as old as time itself. Tijuana Makes Me Happy, which won the Grand Jury Prize at this year's Slamdance Film Festival, is both a charming coming-of-age story and a celebration of the most infamous of all Mexican border towns. It's also a subtle criticism of society's lust for money and success and the lengths to which people will go to attain both. For the film's hero, Indio, the city's red-light district is a siren's song of erotic mystery. While just across the border - the "other side," as Tijuanans call it - lies a world of boundless economic possibility. In the middle resides Indio's loyalty to his underemployed but decent father, Jhonny. Which to choose? Which to choose?