“La Mission” opens in LA and NYC today!

It’s so good to see this terrific movie get a theatrical release.

If you live in LA or New York, find out where you can see La Mission which stars Benjamin Bratt as a reformed inmate and recovering alcoholic. He’s a single father whose joie de vivre lies in socializing with his circle of friends and transforming old cars into lowrider masterpieces. When he discovers that his high schooler  son, Jesse (Ray Valdez) is gay, his world is thrown into turmoil.

In the film, directed by Benjamin’s brother Peter Bratt, the actor is not afraid to go to dark places and his rage is palpable and disturbing.

As a Latino gay man, I may have felt it more deeply than most because I could relate to the parent wanting so badly to love the child but unable to get past their own homophobia. And I loved how the son in the film has such a strong sense of himself in his teens and realizes that while painful to him, it really is his father’s problem.

Here is the trailer:

La Mission was the opening night film at Outfest last summer and on that occasion, Benjamin pointed out that the film’s shoot in San Francisco happened to coincide with the filming of Milk: “I kind of like to think of La Mission as the opposite side of the same coin as Milk is on because while they are both very different films, they both depict the struggle for gay civil rights and the fight to find tolerance in the culture and acceptance. It’s interesting too because when you think about San Francisco, it’s really just seven miles by seven miles and yet there are just these unseen borders and it’s not the least bit ironic that the Mission District butts right up against Castro and yet they seem like two entirely different worlds. Like Milk, we hope that our film is a kind of bridge between communities and a spark to have a dialogue that continues to be ongoing.”