Ballad of an Immigrant with Memory
2025 · 12m · USA
Directed by Sergio Muñoz Esquer
Genres: drama, fantasy, surrealism
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
After submerging into a bowl of menudo, an undocumented Mexican immigrant in the U.S. embarks on a surreal journey through his memories in Mexico in search of the rosary his mother gave him before he left the country 30 years ago.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A surrealist memory dive through menudo feels like it should be precious or self-important, but Esquer commits so fully to the absurdist logic—submerging into soup as literal threshold—that it becomes genuinely disorienting in a way that matters.
The film positions itself at the intersection of magical realism and immigrant narrative, handling the formal tension between dreamscape and document with restraint; the 12-minute length becomes an intentional constraint rather than a limitation.
The decision to anchor 30 years of displacement and longing through the search for a single object—the rosary—gives the surrealism emotional weight that keeps the whole film from floating away into abstraction alone.
Reviews
Director Sergio Muñoz Esquer takes the audience through a surrealist maze of Alberto's memories and his sense of home. The menudo is a difficult reminder of how far home feels and the forces that kept Alberto away, but also the connection to family and love.