DVD, Digital Release: My Mexican Bretzel

Digital, DVD Release Date: March 30, 2021
Price: DVD $24.95
Studio: IndiePix

A hybrid of fiction and documentary filmmaking, My Mexican Bretzel, the 2019 feature film directorial debut of Spanish filmmaker Nuria Giménez, uses silent home movies, fleeting snippets of sound, and diaristic narration to tell its tale.

It’s the story of Vivian Barrett, a wealthy Swiss woman, and her husband, Léon, a WWII pilot-turned-entrepreneur. Partial hearing loss doesn’t impede Léon from creating a pharmaceutical wonder drug that changes their lives, propelling the go-lucky couple into a world of adventure, romance, and mystical truth-seeking. From the 40s through 60s, from the Alps to Le Mans to Manhattan to Hawaii, vulnerability, belonging, truth, and mid-century opulence are explored in a way that only the magic of cinema allows… with a dazzling twist.

Inspired by her grandparents’ home movies from the 1950s and 60s, which were discovered by Giménez in 2011, the filmmaker set about planning a unique film structure: she wrote a diary on behalf of Barret, recounting specific moments of her life and her innermost thoughts. She then illustrated those words with material selected from amongst her forebears’ 50 reels of 16mm film.

Well-received in both the U.S. and abroad, My Mexican Bretzel won the Found Footage Award at Rotterdam, the Audience Award at Festival D’A, and Best Film, Best Screenplay, and Best Direction at Gijón International Film Festival. It also secured nominations for Best Documentary at both the Gaudí and Goya Awards.