Sangre de Mi Sangre (2008)

Image credit: Igor Martinovic

FALSE 'HOOD Armando Hernández steals a young Mexican's identity in the veracity-stretching Sundance prize winner Sangre de Mi Sangre

When a drama is set amid gritty poverty (in this case, Hispanic Brooklyn), with lots of bare-bulb lighting and handheld camera work, the implication is: This is authentic! Yet little of Christopher Zalla's Sangre de Mi Sangre, which took the 2007 Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, rings true. Jorge Adrián Espíndola, as a young Mexican who smuggles himself to New York to meet the father he never knew, and Armando Hernández, as the hustler who steals Espíndola's identity, are playing thinly sketched, spiritually opaque outcasts. But Jesús Ochoa, as the grizzled walrus of a father, is touching. C