Now available on home Video

"Two thumbs up." ROGER EBERT & THE MOVIES
" A most affecting experience." LOS ANGELES TIMES
" It is very simply a great film." THE WASHINGTON POST

THE CITY is now available on home video from New Yorker Films. Visit the New Yorker Films website or purchase a VHS copy from amazon.com.

Zeitgeist Films presents THE CITY (LA CIUDAD), the critically acclaimed and multiple award-winning feature film debut of writer/director David Riker. In Spanish and English with English subtitles, THE CITY is a collection of stories of love, hope, and loss, and an affecting portrait of Latin American immigrants living in New York City. Set in the present day, THE CITY takes us inside this community of newcomers, creating a powerful and incisive drama about the loneliness, displacement, and economic hardship they face in this new and unfamiliar world.

THE CITY, which was nominated for three 2000 Independent Feature Project/West Spirit Awards, was a surprise hit at both the 1999 Sundance and Toronto film festivals. In its Los Angeles premiere, the film played to a sold-out audience as the closing film of Edward James Olmos' LA Latino International Film Festival. Its awards include: Best Film by a non-Latin American Director Award at the Havana International Film Festival, the Taos Talking Pictures Festival Land Grant Award, the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival Nestor Almendros Prize, Best Narrative Feature at the South by Southwest Film Festival, and Best North American Feature at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. Director Riker was also the 1999 recipient of the Open Palm Award from the Independent Feature Project's Gotham Awards.

THE CITY opened on October 22, 1999 and enjoyed a remarkable ten-week run with arthouse audiences in New York, where the film played to sold-out crowds. And in Los Angeles, THE CITY received an overwhelmingly positive response from audiences, over one-third of whom were Spanish-speaking—proof that the film found a crossover audience of Latino filmgoers. In fact, the demand for the film from the Spanish-speaking community in New York inspired a re-release of THE CITY on three screens in Latino neighborhoods.

Dramatically photographed in black and white, THE CITY is comprised of four separate stories: workers paid to gather bricks from an abandoned lot struggle to save one who is crushed by a wall that collapses; a young Mexican man new to the city, meets and falls in love with a girl from his home village at a sweet fifteen birthday party, then loses her in the maze of a housing project; a homeless puppeteer dreams of a better life for his daughter, but encounters resistance when he tries to enroll her in school; and a seamstress needs money for her daughter's medical treatment, but the sweatshop where she works has not paid her for more than a month.

In creating this film, Riker strove for authenticity both in the stories he tells and in the characters he portrays. Riker spent five years developing the film within the Latin American community and chose to cast non-actors in almost every role. Because most of the performers are themselves struggling immigrants, they bring a resonant understanding and unparalleled realism to the film. The film began as a short, which won the 1995 Student Academy Award for Best Dramatic Short and the Director's Guild of America Best Student Film Award.

Here's what other critics have to say about THE CITY:

" Reminiscent of the post-war Italian Neo-Realistic
work of Roberto Rossellini."
THE NEW YORK TIMES

" Sensational."
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

" Stunning."
THE NEW YORKER

" One of the most accomplished and moving
American films of recent years."
THE AMERICAN PROSPECT

A film that gives "a voice to those who
are seldom heard."
MUNDO L.A.

" A moving and gripping portrayal of immigrants
in the so-called 'Big Apple.'"
LA OPINION


THE CITY is produced by North Star Films and funded by the Independent Television Service and Echo Lake Productions. Running time: 88 minutes/Not Rated. USA.