American Me

Director: Edward James Olmos

1992 / 126min / 35mm

Olmos stars in his own directorial debut, from a screenplay by future director Desmond Nakano and cult auteur Floyd Mutrux (Dusty and Sweets McGee; Aloha, Bobby and Rose) that offers a fictional, decades-spanning account of the Mexican Mafia’s slow rise to power within the California prison system. Beginning amidst Los Angeles’s racially charged Zoot Suit Riots of 1943, American Me follows the son of two of the riots’ victims, Montoya Santana (Olmos as an adult; Panchito Gomez as a teen), through a life of violence that includes the streets of East L.A., juvenile hall, Folsom State Prison, and a final repentance that threatens to turn former allies into enemies. A scalpel-precise critique of the American penal system, cast extensively with real inmates and gang members.