Bulls and Saints

“The bulls throw you to the ground, the saints lift you to the skies.”

This is a proverb that holds true for Tacho Juárez and Cecilia Mendoza, who live in constant limbo as undocumented immigrants in the United States. Their lives take an unexpected turn when they decide to return home to Mexico after 24 years away.

As teenagers in love, they ran away from Cheran, their hometown, in search of opportunity and adventure in the United States. Like many, they had planned to go for just a few years but ended up staying for many more, eventually settling in rural North Carolina. After years of hardship, they had two sons, Alan and “Flaco”. To satisfy their nostalgia and survive the isolation of being an undocumented family, Tacho and Cecilia started helping organize traditional community fiestas.

These elaborate celebrations of the revered Saints of their town, complete with bull rodeos, transform the rural South into a temporary Cheran and pass down important cultural traditions to their children while strengthening the community. With their roots now growing deeper in el Norte, Tacho and Cecilia have found a semblance of stability, although very aware that anything can happen to an undocumented family to unsettle their peace. At this stage, many undocumented Latinx immigrants abandon the dream of returning home and find a way to settle down in the United States for good. Yet, for Tacho and Cecilia, the longing to be with their families and the “simple life” of their town has only intensified, making their return inevitable.

The “American Dream” is not for everyone. Meanwhile, in Cheran, family tragedy, environmental crisis, and social upheaval have forever changed their town. Moving forward with their plans, they discover the emotional and logistical complexity of making their dream become a reality and soon realize that it will be the most difficult journey of their lives. Set between the rodeo arenas of North Carolina and the spellbinding Mexican town they yearn for, Bulls and Saints is a love story about reverse migration, rebellion, and redemption.

Touring with the Film

Rodrigo Dorfman (Director) is North Carolina-based award-winning writer, filmmaker and multimedia producer who has worked with POV, HBO, Salma Hayek’s Ventanazul and the BBC among others. His films have been screened at some of the top international film festivals in the world (Toronto, Full Frame, Edinburgh, Telluride, Human Rights Watch). With his father, he won best screenplay award from the Writer’s Guild of Great Britain for Prisoners in Time (1997), starring Joh Hurt. His short One Night in Kernersville won the Jury Award for best short at Full Frame (2011). His work has been exhibited at the Levine Museum of the New South, at the Atlanta History Center, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, the MAK in Los Angeles and SECCA in Winston Salem. He is a cinematographer of the Sundance award-winning documentary Always in Season, about the impact of lynching on four different communities; his documentary This Taco Truck Kills Fascists won the Best Louisiana Feature Award at the New Orleans Film Festival, and his feature FIESTA! Quinceañera on the intersection of quinceañeras and immigrant traditions in the South broadcast on PBS stations nationwide in 2018. His feature documentary, Quaranteened, will be broadcast on PBS stations in the spring of 2022 and streamed on the Amazon Prime PBS Documentary Chanel. His memoir Generation Exile will be published by Arte Publico Press in March 2023.