The Dairy Center for the Arts is doing something unique, so pay attention. The Americas Latino Eco-Festival Film Forum covers three continents (North and South America and Antarctica), provides a much-needed voice for the Latino community, discusses political and human interests, and addresses a multitude of ecological issues.

It’s a four-day, 14-movie crash course in a world that doesn’t get the exposure it deserves and demands your attention.

Now in its second year, the Americas Latino Eco-Festival (ALEF) returns to Boulder and Denver in hopes of raising awareness for environmental issues and continuing the ongoing dialogue of mobilization and social justice. The Dairy Center for the Arts will be hosting the Film Forum portion of the fest, among others, and as their website states, “The event will showcase celebrities, experts in the arts and sciences, and community and public policy leaders, as they propose solutions to inspire our communities to take an active role in claiming leadership in the browning of the conservation movement.”

Attendees will include Jean-Michel Cousteau (who will speak on his father, Jacques Cousteau), filmmakers Marcelina Cravat, Petra Costa, Coury Deeb, Mark Kitchell, Anthony Powell, and Denise Zmekhol, as well as Skyped-in interviews and discussions.

The 14 movies ALEF is screening are both extensive and impressive, but the one that immediately stood out to this reviewer was John Sayles’s criminally underseen Go For Sisters, which will play Friday, Sept. 12 at 6 p.m., and will feature a Q&A with one of its stars, Edward James Olmos.

Filmmaker John Sayles has been living on the fringes of independent cinema since his 1979 debut, Return of the Secaucus Seven, and even if he has lost a few steps over the decades, he regained his footing with 2013’s Go For Sisters, a “ripped from the headlines” hook about the shadowy goings-on of the U.S./Mexico border that becomes infused with local flavor and old-fashioned detective work reminiscent of a Raymond Chandler novel. 

In the hands of another director, Go For Sisters could have been mired by the procedural aspects of detective work and the political maneuvering between gangs, local officers, and border patrol. Sayles dispenses all that in favor of deeply developed characters: Bernice (LisaGay Hamilton) and Fontayne (Yolonda Ross), two girls who were so close as children that they could “go for sisters” or at least pass as relatives. 

As it goes in childhood, Bernice and Fontayne’s friendship was at the mercy of their families’ paths, and they ended up going in separate directions. Neither could have predicted how separate until Fontayne, an ex-convict, entered the office of Bernice, now a parole officer. It was strictly a chance meeting, but chance meetings in movies have lasting effects.

The story: Bernice’s son, Dez (Mahershala Ali), is missing, and Bernice reaches out to Fontayne for help. A little investigation leads them to believe Dez may have been kidnapped by a Chinese gang and taken south to Tijuana. The two hire a retired lawman turned private eye, Freddy (Edward James Olmos), to help track down Dez. Freddy suffers from a rare eye disease that is rapidly taking his sight, and he takes the case as a chance to get his feet under him one last time.

Go For Sisters slowly reveals itself through twists and turns while developing characters alongside the world they inhabit. While the three searches for Dez, Sayles gives the audience a walking tour of Tijuana’s backside, a side that no casual tourist would be privy to. The trio uncovers more than a simple missing person case, and a very complex and profitable abduction and kidnapping system is revealed. 

Sayles occasionally paints with a broad brush when depicting the community of Tijuana (the Chinese gang, in particular, feels more like an after-school special than a wholly realized entity), but it is in the quiet moments of characters talking to one another where truth is revealed. The more we learn about Bernice, Fontayne, and Freddie, the less we see them as characters and the more we see them as people doing the best they can with the hand they’re dealt.

As the title suggests, the focus of Go For Sisters is the relationship between Bernice and Fontayne, but the star of the show is the incomparable Olmos, who plays Freddy like an old and beaten-up Philip Marlowe: easygoing, knowledgeable, and ready for the worst while hoping for the best.

Olmos has been a Hispanic movie star staple since the mid-1970s. In 1985, he was awarded both the Golden Globe and Emmy for his role as Lieutenant Martin Castillo in Miami Vice. His performance as teacher Jaime Escalante in Stand and Deliver (1988) earned him an Academy Award Nomination for Best Actor (he lost to Dustin Hoffman’s Rain Man performance).

In addition to his acting, Olmos’s personal website, http://www.edwardjamesolmos.com, lists an extensive amount of advocacy work that spans anywhere from political activism to working with the Latino community, establishing the Los Angeles Latino Film Festival in 1997, co-founding the nonprofit Latino Literacy Now and even founding Latino Public Broadcasting in 1998, where Olmos served as the chairman. He continues to visit juvenile halls and detention centers to speak with at-risk teens, as well as serving as an international ambassador for UNICEF.

ALEF is giving viewers the opportunity to engage with this phenomenal actor following the screening of Go For Sisters. Tickets for Go For Sisters and the rest of the ALEF Film Forum start at $6 and can be ordered online at www. thedairy.org.

Go For Sisters (2013)
Written and directed by John Sayles
Produced by Peter Bobrow, Edward James Olmos, Alejandro Springall
Starring: LisaGay Hamilton, Yolonda Ross, Edward James Olmos, Mahershala Ali, Hector Elizondo
Variance Films, Not rated, Running time 123 minutes, Opened March 11, 2013

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The above article first appeared in the pages of Boulder Weekly Vol. 22, No. 5, “Activism with an authentic flavor.”