This director made a John Hughes-inspired movie about a Mexican American teen

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Set us as preferred Growing up, filmmaker Fernando Eimbcke didn’t get to watch the scene in “The Breakfast Club” where the teenage characters smoke marijuana.That moment was removed from the VHS copy of the 1980s classic he’d rented because of strict censorship in Mexico at the time.Drug use or not, that John Hughes movie, as well “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” impacted him profoundly.

“Those were movies that spoke to young people, and in Mexico there wasn’t much cinema aimed at teens,” Eimbcke tells me in Spanish on a video call from Mexico City.From his indie trench, Eimbcke, 55, has tried to fill that void in Mexican cinema — starting with his 2004 acclaimed debut “Temporada de patos” (Duck Season), about two teen boys spending a day without adult supervision.Since then, in films like “Lake Tahoe” (2008) or “Club Sandwich” (2013), the woes of adolescence have dominated his purview.With “Olmo,” in theaters Friday, Eimbcke has adapted his career-long interest on the youth’s preoccupations to a story on this side of the Mexico-U.S.

border for the first time.Set and filmed on location in Las Cruces, N.M., his bilingual coming-of-age dramedy follows the titular Olmo (played by Aivan Uttapa), a charismatic Mexican American 14-year-old boy in the 1970s, whose bedridden immigrant father requires around-the-clock care.The tightly written and humorously bittersweet narrative (co-penned by Eimbcke and Vanesa Garnica) unfolds over the course of a fateful Saturday.Nina Sandoval (Melanie Frometa), Olmo’s crush, invites him and his boot-wearing best friend Miguel (Diego Olmedo) to a party, with the condition that they bring a stereo.

But Olmo has also been tasked with looking after dad Nestor (Gustavo Sánchez Parra), while his mother works.Olmo must decide between fulfilling his duty or pursuing h...