“Romántico”
A California Documentary Project film |
Find out about other CCH-supported documentary projects. |
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 witness 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.”
The making of “Romántico.”
Filmmaker Mark Becker spent five years making “Romántico.” A graduate of the Stanford Documentary Film Program, Becker says that among his main influences are the cinema verité films of the 1960s and 1970s and particularly singles out “Salesman,” the 1969 Maysles brothers film about door-to-door salesmen who sell expensive Bibles to low-income Catholic families. “That film captures people at their most honest and vulnerable, and the subtle moments push the story along. I try to approach documentary filmmaking in that spirit.”
Read IndieWIRE’s interview with filmmaker Mark Becker to learn more about the making of “Romántico.”
“A LOVELY TOUCHING MOVING … PORTRAIT.
This man talks about his own life — his own struggles — and you get a real sense of his dignity and … that he is a genuine artist.”
- A.O. Scott, New York Times
- A.O. Scott, New York Times
"'ROMÁNTICO' IS VISUAL POETRY ON THE RUN and as any work of art does when it’s successful, improves our perceptions of the world. No one who sees ‘Romántico’ for what it is will ever again likely brush off a strolling musician, bypass a handbill or lobby for a border wall.”
- John Anderson, New York Newsday
Read what other critics are saying.