''En el séptimo día'' (English: ''On the Seventh Day'') is a 2017 American Spanish-language independent drama film directed by

Jim McKay James Kenneth McManus (September 24, 1921 – June 7, 2008), better known professionally as Jim McKay, was an American television sports journalist. McKay was best known for hosting ABC's '' Wide World of Sports'' (1961–1998). His introd ...

. Set over the course of seven days, the film depicts a group of undocumented Mexican immigrants living in Sunset Park,

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

, who form a soccer team. The film premiered at BAMcinemaFest in Brooklyn in June 2017, and screened in the International Competition section at the

Locarno Festival The Locarno Film Festival is an annual film festival, held every August in Locarno, Switzerland. Founded in 1946, the festival screens films in various competitive and non-competitive sections, including feature-length narrative, documentary, sh ...

in August 2017. In February 2019, it won the

John Cassavetes Award The Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award is presented to the creative team of a film budgeted at less than $500,000 by the Film Independent, a non-profit organization dedicated to independent film and independent filmmakers. It is named after ac ...

at the

34th Independent Spirit Awards The 34th Film Independent Spirit Awards, honoring the best independent films of 2018, were presented by Film Independent on February 23, 2019. The nominations were announced on November 16, 2018 by actresses Molly Shannon and Gemma Chan. The ce ...

Plot

José, a bicycle delivery worker, leads a soccer team of undocumented immigrants from Puebla, Mexico. As the championship game approaches the coming Sunday, José's boss demands that he work that day for a private party.

Cast

* Fernando Cardona as José * Gilberto Jimenez as Elmer * Abel Perez as Jesús * Genoel Ramírez as Artemio * Alfonso Velasquez as Felix * Alejandro Huitzil as Nacho * Gilberto Arenas as Alfonso * Ricardo Gonzalez as Ricardo * Eduardo Espinosa as Juan * Ernesto Lucero as Baltasar * Mathia Vargas as Lisa

Production

McKay first conceived of the story in October 2001. The project was shelved for over a decade as McKay went on to direct ''

Everyday People "Everyday People" is a 1968 song composed by Sly Stone and first recorded by his band, Sly and the Family Stone. It was the first single by the band to go to number one on the Soul singles chart and the U.S. ''Billboard'' Hot 100 chart. It held ...

'' (2004), '' Angel Rodriguez'' (2005), and several television series until he resumed working on the film in 2015. The script was inspired in part by the book ''Mexican New York'' by Robert Smith, which studies a community of migrants from the state of Puebla, Mexico, to

Sunset Park, Brooklyn Sunset Park is a neighborhood in the southwestern part of the borough of Brooklyn in New York City, bounded by Park Slope and Green-Wood Cemetery to the north, Borough Park to the east, Bay Ridge to the south, and Upper New York Bay to the ...

. McKay said, " spired by this book, the idea that though we might live in the melting pot of New York City, we are often territorial, rarely venturing into or getting to know surrounding neighborhoods a stone's throw away, came into focus once again." The main cast consisted entirely of non-professional actors who were Mexican immigrants, most of whom had come from Sunset Park. The casting process began in the summer of 2015 and lasted for seven months. Each actor was cast without determining which character in the script he would play, and the roles were finally assigned after a period of script reading and soccer practices. Filming took place over the course of 19 days in June and July 2016, in the neighborhoods of Sunset Park,

Park Slope Park Slope is a neighborhood in northwestern Brooklyn, New York City, within the area once known as South Brooklyn. Park Slope is roughly bounded by Prospect Park and Prospect Park West to the east, Fourth Avenue to the west, Flatbush A ...

, and Gowanus.

Reception

On review aggregator website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the film holds an approval rating of 100% based on 31 reviews, with an average rating of 8.2/10. On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, the film has a score 87 out of 100, based on 14 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:En el séptimo día 2017 films 2010s Spanish-language films American independent films 2017 independent films 2010s sports drama films American association football films Films set in Brooklyn Films shot in New York City American sports drama films 2017 drama films Spanish-language American films 2010s American films John Cassavetes Award winners