California Documentary Project
Romántico
Film Arts Foundation San Francisco
Project director: Mark Becker
212/675-3924
mark@meteorfilms.org
A film portrait of a Mexican musician
“Romántico,” Mark Becker’s award-winning film, takes us inside the life of Carmelo Muniz Sanchez, an immigrant from Mexico who tries to make a living and send money home by playing traditional Mexican music in San Francisco restaurants. The film follows Muniz to Mexico, where he returns to care for his ailing mother, and we witnesses his struggles to support himself and his family. Writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, movie critic Mick LaSalle said [the film] "is an encounter with a special man. Sanchez has wisdom, humility and devoutness, and he’s a real artist. Maybe we’ve seen him before, but without director Mark Becker, we’d have never gotten to know him.”