Championed by Medal of Freedom recipient and Executive Producer Dolores Huerta and promotional partner, Jarritos, this award-winning bilingual documentary takes a raw and intimate portrait of race, labor, and class in modern-day America. Set at the peak of the food truck boom, Backstreet to the American Dream offers an immersive look at blue-collar entrepreneurs and Latino immigrants navigating the collision of hustle and hardship in the heart of Los Angeles.
Backstreet to the American Dream profiles American entrepreneurs and Mexican immigrants in the food truck industry. Indeed, these are very different operations in the same city: Ryan Harkins rose to fame after Grill ‘Em All’s first-season win on The Great Food Truck Race on the Food Network in 2010, and Doña Guillermina Vella Rio owns the mariscos (seafood) truck, El Pescadito, that has parked at the same swap meet near South Los Angeles since 1982.
Ryan Harkins and crew celebrate Grill Em All’s first anniversary on December 16, 2010. (Photo by Corey Takahashi)
Born in 1954, this grandmother, with salt-and-pepper hair, still cries when she thinks about illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in 1977 to get a job and support her baby boy back home in Nayarit.
Doña Guille has been parking her lonchera, El Pescadito, in the same blue-collar L.A. neighborhood since 1982. (Photo by Patricia Nazario)
The historic centerpiece of this bilingual film is a stunning four-minute animation tracing the evolution of street food from Ancient Mexico to South L.A. Scored with handmade instruments and narrated in English, Spanish, and the Indigenous Náhuatl language, this groundbreaking sequence has won two Best Animated Short awards.
This vérité-style feature, told from the trenches, channels the spirit of civil rights-era documentaries while reimagining the American Dream through a Latino lens. Amid deepening division and intensifying anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States, the story zeroes in on the singular act that unites us all: breaking bread across class and culture. Centered on food trucks, where people from all walks of life share meals, this cross-cultural odyssey captures the growing divide between wage earners and the wealthy, survival and spectacle, hardship and hustle. Through food, the film ignites empathy and sparks dialogue among audiences who might not otherwise contemplate the human cost of inequality.
Timely and unflinching, this powerful slice of contemporary Americana delivers an urgent call to action: recognize the humanity of those who keep America running, and the fragility of democracy in the struggle for labor rights, dignity, and equal opportunity. This cinematic exposé has screened at 14 film festivals, including Dances With Films, Newport Beach, Sonoma, San Antonio, GuadaLAjara, Workers Unite–NYC, and Ethnografilm Paris; 17 universities and cultural centers across the U.S., and has won 16 awards. More at @BackstreetFilm.com.
In collaboration with illustrator Jules Rivera, the four-minute animated open traces street food through time, and back to Doña Guille’s food truck in South L.A.
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