Boca Chica

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Beautifully juxtaposing the realities and expectations of a young girl approaching womanhood in the Dominican Republic, Boca Chica shines a light on the insidious child sex trade and the lives it seeks to destroy.

Director Gabriella A. Moses exposes the community’s complicity by way of 12-year-old Desi who is constantly exposed to unwanted advances and crude comments from older men. She works at the family restaurant alongside her mother Carmen, who encourages the behavior, in a once serene beachside town now bustling with foreign tourists.

Music is Desi’s escape. She dreams of parlaying her nascent musical talents into a full-fledged singing career. When she stumbles across a group of local rappers that set themselves apart from the scene, her passions begin to boil to the surface.

Boca Chica explores themes of identity, family, codependency, and truth, exposing how local social norms present the sexualization of very young girls as a path to survival.

“Sparked by the light of Camilo’s performance, alongside daily life in the Caribbean, Boca Chica is a quiet film that finds impact in bitter truth and hopes unbound.” — Sherin Nicole, AWFJ

“Its arresting performances, working-class setting, and partial hip-hop soundtrack are reminiscent of Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank and Alice Rohrwacher’s The Wonders. A tale of growing up in a cruel world and family secrets, Moses’s quietly magnetic debut urges us to question the dreams we want to pursue and the façades we may live.” — M.J. O'Tool, Hammer to Nail

“Catches the uneasy intersection that can trap females, of an exuberant culture, curious tourists, and service businesses sustained through remittances of diaspora relatives. This strong sympathy for a Caribbean girl is refreshing.” — Nora Lee Mandel, Maven's Nest

“Gabriella A. Moses and her woman-led crew crafted the film to explore young womanhood and deferred dreams in the Dominican Republic. With its: ‘so crisp it feels like being there’ cinematography and a sense of terrible things lingering at the periphery, Boca Chica compels us to question what is happening and where things went wrong.” — Sherin Nicole, AWFJ

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Main credits

Moses, Gabriella A. (film director)
Rondón, Mariana (screenwriter)
Ugás, Marité (screenwriter)
Ramírez, Sterlyn (film producer)
Camilo, Scarlet (actor)
Cruz, Jean (actor)
Chapman, Lia (actor)

Other credits

Cinematography, Micaela Cajahuaringa; editing, Cecilia Delgado; music, Cresencio "El Prodigio" García.

MARC Record See Worldcat record

Keywords

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