Directed by Estefanía Contreras and Silvia del Carmen Castaños • 2023 • United States

In HUMMINGBIRDS, directors Silvia Del Carmen Castaños and Estefanía “Beba” Contreras tell their own coming-of-age story, transforming their hometown on the Texas-Mexico border into a wonderland of creative expression and activist hijinx. In Laredo, Texas, best friends Silvia and Beba know that the long summer nights of their youth cannot last forever. Their hangout spots are so familiar, but they’re stuck in an immigration process over which deportation hangs as a constant possibility, making home seem like a fragile concept. Between bars, drive-thrus, friends’ couches, and the borderlands, they confront the stresses of survival, the future, and community-building. For them, this means protest action for legal abortion and against border-control abuses in a politically divided America. But the dusty half-light is also a time for poetry and dreams. Filmed collaboratively over the final summer of their fleeting youth, their cinematic self-portrait celebrates the power of friendship and joy as tools of survival and resistance.