美国国家公共电台 NPR On The Seventh Day, They Played Soccer

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ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

Director Jim McKay's films pay close attention to the lives of marginalized New Yorkers - workers at a restaurant that's about to close, young people of color coming of age and, with his most recent film, undocumented Mexican immigrants working and playing in Brooklyn. "En El Septimo Dia," or "On The Seventh Day," features a mostly amateur cast in a story about how those immigrants work toward their one day off so they can play a little soccer. Rick Karr reports.

RICK KARR, BYLINE¹: Jim McKay says he decided² to make his first two films about young women of color after having an epiphany. When he walked into a video store - this was back in the 1990s - he saw versions of himself, white males, in all kinds of films. Then he tried to imagine being a young woman of color.

JIM MCKAY: You'd go in these aisles³, and you'd see box after box after box of VHS's, and you'd just realize, like, for that young woman, there's nothing there. She's not there. You're really not visible.

KARR: His new film tries to make young male immigrants from the Mexican state of Puebla visible. They work six days a week as cooks, delivery guys, selling cotton candy, and on their one day off, Sunday, they play soccer.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "EN EL SEPTIMO DIA")

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character, speaking Spanish).

(CHEERING)

KARR: A restaurant delivery worker named Jose scores the winning goal and sends his team - most of whom are also his roommates in a tiny Brooklyn apartment - through to the league championship final. He's in a great mood the next morning when he shows up for his shift. Then his boss arrives and speaks the first word of English in the film.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "EN EL SEPTIMO DIA")

CHRISTOPHER GABRIEL NUNEZ: (As Steve, speaking Spanish).

FERNANDO CARDONA: (As Jose, speaking Spanish).

NUNEZ: (As Steve) Bien, excellent.

KARR: The boss has bad news. He needs everyone to work an extra shift next Sunday, the day of the fina.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "EN EL SEPTIMO DIA")

NUNEZ: (As Steve) I need everyone on Sunday, Felix included. So if he isn't over his stomach ache by then, tell him he's out of a job.

CARDONA: (As Jose) Oh, oh, oh, Steve, Steve, hey, Steve, wait a second. What you mean Sunday? You have Junior (ph) and Esto (ph) to work on Sunday.

NUNEZ: (As Steve) I have a private party after brunch⁴ on Sunday, and I need all you guys, everyone.

KARR: Jose spends the rest of the week and the remainder of the film confronting the dilemma⁵ that sets up - whether he should keep the bad news from his teammates, quit his job or work and let his team down. Jim McKay says the story is an homage⁶ to one of his favorite directors, Britain's Ken⁷ Loach; so is the casting of non-professional actors, in McKay's case, from the same Brooklyn neighborhood where the film was shot.

MCKAY: People who had never - who didn't know what a script was, had never seen a scene written out. You had to kind of go like, OK, you read this and then someone's going to - you know what I mean? It was really starting from scratch.

KARR: The process took seven months. The toughest casting call was the lead because Jose appears in nearly every scene of the film. McKay found what he was looking for in a Mexican immigrant construction worker named Fernando Cardona.

MCKAY: Everything about him had something in common with Jose, if not directly, which was that he's a striver. That ambition that he had really made sense with the character.

KARR: McKay's star spends most of his days at the top of a tower just south of Central Park that's already up to 50 stories. Thirty-year-old Fernando Cardona showed up to do an interview in the park carrying a bib for a long-distance run the next weekend. The weekend after that, he planned to go skydiving.

CARDONA: I want to do everything, but sometimes I can't. But all the things I do, I do with my heart, you know? Like, I want to work very hard. It's the only way I can get something.

KARR: Cardona says he was caught and detained the first time he tried to cross into the U.S. He tried again, figuring he'd end up working in restaurants like the characters in the movie. Cardona is thrilled that he got the chance to act, but he also saw it as an opportunity to shine a positive light on undocumented Mexican immigrants like himself.

CARDONA: This is something for my culture. Those people, they have time to see the movie, they going to see that we are Mexico. We don't come to this country to destroy this country, to sell drugs or all those bad things that the people they say about Mexicans.

KARR: Cardona says he's not worried about immigration authorities coming after him now that his face is all over a feature film. He's been sent back to Mexico before. If that doesn't happen, he'll keep working construction and paying taxes as he said he did for his work on the film. "En El Septimo Dia" was shot over the summer of 2016 in the run-up to the election. Filmmaker Jim McKay says he resisted the temptation to make the film a polemic⁸.

MCKAY: It's really a story that would have been valid⁹ 12 years ago and will unfortunately probably be valid into the future.

KARR: "En El Septimo Dia" is currently screening in short runs across the country. For NPR News, I'm Rick Karr in Brooklyn.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ANDO BIEN PEDO")

BANDA LOS RECODITOS: (Singing in Spanish).