Under the Same Moon

Under the Same Moon

Directed by Patricia Riggen

(PG-13)

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A 9-year-old Mexican boy crosses the border to reunite with his mother.

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Under the Same Moon puts a face to the endless debate over immigration, said Owen Gleiberman in Entertainment Weekly. Mexican director Patricia Riggen makes her debut with this “good journalistic drama” about a 9-year-old boy’s illegal journey across the U.S.-Mexico border to find his mother. Shown through the eyes of illegal aliens, the film initiates us, “with no-bull authority, into the rituals, jokes, and survival games of a culture of half-existence: people who live in two places and nowhere at all.” Considering the weight and magnitude of the controversy, the issue merits “a more nuanced film,” said Michael Phillips in the Chicago Tribune. Each year, an estimated 4 million Latin women are forced to leave their children behind to build a better life in the U.S. Under the Same Moon is too light on politics and too heavy on melodrama. But it “never feels like rank exploitation,” said Ann Hornaday in The Washington Post. The film dramatizes the perils and indignities that immigrants face while balancing the sentimentality with “tender irony” and dashes of humor.