40 Fun Facts About El Norte

In El Norte, which animals swarm Enrique and Rosa as they crawl under the border into California?

Rats attack the pair in the film's most harrowing scene, and they were real: disease-free animals bought from a laboratory. The actress playing Rosa had a phobia of them but insisted on doing the scene herself.

From which Central American country do Enrique and Rosa flee at the start of El Norte?

Guatemala was then deep in a civil war in which the army wiped out whole Maya villages, the persecution that drives the pair from home.

Working as a maid in El Norte, Rosa is baffled by which household appliance her employer shows her?

A washing machine with a bewildering set of controls defeats Rosa, so she spreads the clothes out on the grass to dry in the sun instead.

What does the title of Gregory Nava's immigration drama El Norte mean in English?

The North is the characters' name for the United States, which Enrique and Rosa come to imagine as a promised land.

Which California city is the destination where Enrique and Rosa find work in El Norte's final part?

Los Angeles is where the pair land jobs and English classes, and the filmmakers spent years researching among exiles living in Southern California.

Which hit biopic did El Norte director Gregory Nava go on to write and direct?

Selena made a star of Jennifer Lopez and reunited Nava with one of his El Norte actresses, cast as the singer's killer, Yolanda Saldívar.

Which disease, caught during the border crossing, kills Rosa at the end of El Norte?

Typhus strikes just as Enrique is due to fly out for a better job, forcing him to choose between the plane and his sister's bedside.

Why do soldiers murder Enrique and Rosa's father, Arturo, in the first part of El Norte?

He was forming a union among the plantation workers when a bribed co-worker betrayed the organizers' meeting to the army.

Which actress, later the housekeeper Rosalita in The Goonies, plays Rosa's friend Nacha in El Norte?

Lupe Ontiveros reckoned she had played a maid at least 150 times, yet she named El Norte as the favorite film of her long career.

Which crop do Arturo and his fellow villagers pick for plantation bosses in El Norte's opening part?

Coffee is picked under the eyes of intimidating overseers, and Roger Ebert wrote that the killings that follow are the price paid for our morning cup.

Enrique and Rosa finally slip into the United States in El Norte by crawling through what?

An old sewer pipe gets them across on their second try; the first ended when a man posing as a guide tried to rob them.

As a boy, El Norte director Gregory Nava often crossed the border into which Mexican city?

Tijuana, where he had relatives, later supplied locations for the film; as a boy he wondered who lived in the cardboard shacks there.

Which U.S. city's lights do Enrique and Rosa see on emerging from their border crossing in El Norte?

San Diego is also where Gregory Nava grew up, and the gulf between it and the shacks across the fence was the seed of the story.

A businesswoman in El Norte offers Enrique a better-paid foreman's job in which American city?

Chicago is an offer he first turns down; he changes his mind only after a jealous co-worker reports him to immigration agents.

Enrique's first steady work in El Norte is which job at an upscale California restaurant?

Busboy is only his first rung: once his English classes pay off, he is promoted to waiter's assistant.

Before becoming a maid in El Norte, Rosa's first job in California is at which kind of workplace?

A garment factory gives Rosa her start, until an immigration raid she barely escapes forces her to find a new job.

El Norte's middle chapter, about crossing Mexico, takes its one-word title from which animal?

Coyote is border slang for a paid guide who smuggles migrants across, and the pair are cheated by a fake one before finding an honest one.

How do Enrique and Rosa convince a U.S. Border Patrol officer in El Norte that they are Mexican?

By swearing constantly, as a neighbor had coached them, they get themselves sent back only as far as the border instead of all the way home.

Which American magazine shapes Enrique and Rosa's picture of the United States in El Norte?

Good Housekeeping issues treasured by their godmother Josefita show a land where even the poor seem to own a refrigerator.

What is the Maya surname shared by Enrique, Rosa and their father Arturo in El Norte?

Xuncax also heads the film's first chapter, which is titled in full after the doomed father.

After Rosa's death, the closing scenes of El Norte show Enrique returning to which kind of work?

Day labor means waiting in a parking lot to be picked by a man looking for muscle, just as Enrique did when he first arrived.

Which PBS drama anthology series supplied half of the financing for El Norte?

American Playhouse put up half the money; the rest came from pre-sales, one of them to Britain's Channel 4.

El Norte earned Gregory Nava and Anna Thomas an Academy Award nomination in which category?

Best Original Screenplay was the nomination shared by the then-married writing team, whose film had been half financed by public television.

Roger Ebert's review likened El Norte to which American classic?

The Grapes of Wrath was his comparison in a four-star review that praised the film's blend of visual beauty, melodrama and anger.

Which U.S. institution selected El Norte in 1995 for its National Film Registry?

National Film Registry titles are picked as culturally, historically or aesthetically significant by the Library of Congress, and El Norte joined just twelve years after its premiere.

Posing as tourists, Gregory Nava's parents smuggled what out of Mexico in suitcases for El Norte?

Exposed film already shot for the picture left the country in their luggage during a shoot that armed men eventually shut down.

During El Norte's shoot in Mexico, which crew member did Nava say police kidnapped for ransom?

The accountant was held for ransom, and after gunmen took over the set the crew had to bribe their way out and start again in California.

After El Norte's shoot moved to California, who did Gregory Nava say played the village extras?

Real Maya refugees living in California filled the rebuilt village, the very people, Nava said, that the movie was about.

El Norte's co-writer and producer Anna Thomas first made her name with which 1972 cookbook?

The Vegetarian Epicure, written while she was still a film student, became a touchstone of the natural foods movement.

Which American concert work, later heard in the war film Platoon, plays at two points in El Norte?

Adagio for Strings, by Samuel Barber, has long been music for mourning, played after the deaths of Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy.

Besides Spanish and English, which Indigenous language is spoken by the villagers in El Norte?

K'iche' is a Maya tongue with over a million speakers, and the film goes almost its entire first hour without a word of English.

Gregory Nava and Anna Thomas of El Norte later shared a writing credit on which artist biopic?

Frida starred Salma Hayek as the Mexican painter Kahlo and credited four screenwriters, Nava and Thomas among them.

Gregory Nava and Anna Thomas of El Norte co-founded the group behind which annual film prizes?

Independent Spirit Awards grew out of the Independent Feature Project, whose founding meeting could fit in the couple's living room.

El Norte lost its Oscar race to which film written and directed by Robert Benton?

Places in the Heart won for Benton, and the other beaten nominees in the category included the comedies Splash and Beverly Hills Cop.

Which Cuban-born actor, later Ugly Betty's father Ignacio Suarez, plays Carlos in El Norte?

Tony Plana also voiced Manny Calavera in the video game Grim Fandango and has spoken out for immigration reform.

Which Mexican actress plays Rosa in El Norte and sings "Rosa's Song" on its soundtrack?

Zaide Silvia Gutiérrez went on to appear in dozens of Mexican films and rejoined Gregory Nava for Bordertown in 2007.

Which El Norte cinematographer later won an Emmy for the HBO western series Deadwood?

James Glennon first drew notice with El Norte and, in the same year, shot the desert and forest location scenes of Return of the Jedi.

In which section of the 1984 Cannes Film Festival, outside the main competition, was El Norte shown?

Un Certain Regard, whose name means a certain glance, was introduced in 1978 for films with unusual styles and non-traditional stories.

Which Hill Street Blues actor plays Monte Bravo, the motel manager, in El Norte?

Trinidad Silva was killed by a drunk driver in 1988 while still filming the comedy UHF, which was dedicated to his memory.

At which university's film school did El Norte's Gregory Nava and Anna Thomas both study?

UCLA is where Nava earned his master's degree in 1976, the year after the two filmmakers married.