Arquivo

On its surface Padre Nuestro is a suspenseful drama about stolen identity. But on a much deeper level it’s a film about family relationships and the ambiguous nature of morality. At the heart of the film lies the visceral labyrinth of deceptions and frustrated hopes of New York City, a place where most people are outsiders and family becomes defined by relationships not based on blood, but on shared experience and the need for connection. Juan and Pedro meet in the back of a tractor-trailer filled with undocumented Mexican immigrants. Pedro shows Juan a sealed letter that his mother, now dead, has given him as an introduction to the father he never knew. He brags to his new friend that his father, Diego, left Mexico for New York many years before and has become a wealthy restaurant owner and will surely rejoice at the arrival of the son he had always wanted. But Diego is in fact a miserly dishwasher who rejects him. That’s when both boys find something they weren’t looking for, but something they need.