Tijuana Makes Me Happy

Every man remembers how hard it is being 15 years old: Your voice is cracking, your hormones are raging, school is boring, the girl you love is a young prostitute who won`t go out with you because you don`t have enough cash, so you start smuggling drugs across the border in order to save enough money to buy a rooster so you can enter a cockfight and win her love. It`s a tale as old as time itself. Tijuana Makes Me Happy, which won the Grand Jury Prize at this year`s Slamdance Film Festival, is both a charming coming-of-age story and a celebration of the most infamous of all Mexican border towns. It`s also a subtle criticism of society`s lust for money and success and the lengths to which people will go to attain both. For the film`s hero, Indio, the city`s red-light district is a siren`s song of erotic mystery. While just across the border - the "other side," as Tijuanans call it - lies a world of boundless economic possibility.