Sugar / En el séptimo día

Part of the UCLA Film & Television Archive’s American Neorealism, Part Two: 1984-2020 screening series. Register at cinema.ucla.edu to attend this in-theater screening.

In person: actor Algenis Perez Soto

Sugar is a baseball tale that sneaks up on you like an adept changeup thrown by a master pitcher. At first it appears to be the traditional tale of an up-and-coming athlete: Algenis Perez Soto stars as Miguel, a ballplayer from the Dominican Republic trying to make it to the major leagues. A star in his hometown of San Pedro de Macoris, he suddenly finds himself questioning his life’s dream after his big break delivers him to a minor league team in the Quad Cities. By the time these questions come home to roost, one realizes that directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck have much more on their minds than just a good sports story, and Miguel’s choices reveal the moving world of a whole culture of immigrants whose vibrant if too-often invisible lives help weave the fabric of a changing America.

(2008, dir. Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck, DCP, color, 120 min.) 

A defining trait of classic Italian neorealism is that even the most everyday conflicts can yield rich layers of insight and experience. Think of all that Vittorio de Sica draws from the simple theft of a bicycle. A Mexican immigrant working food delivery in Brooklyn, José never loses his bike. Instead, his boss tells him he has to work on Sunday, the same day José’s soccer team is scheduled to play in the local league championship. With family back home, José needs his job—and the promise of a promotion coming—but soccer also allows him to shine in a world that would reduce him to his labor—when it acknowledges him at all. Writer-director Jim McKay (Our Song) draws a surprising amount of humor, insight and tension counting down to José’s day of decision as part of a larger portrait of the immigrant community that he turns to for help.

(2017, dir. Jim McKay, DCP, color, in Spanish and English with English subtitles, 92 min.)