Trokas Duras
2025 · 17m · USA
Directed by Jazmin Garcia
Genres: documentary, experimental
Tones: melancholic, mythic, tender
Journeying through the interior landscapes of a Jornalero's dreams and his waking reality in Los Angeles, the film follows day laborers as they strive for personal growth and spiritual fulfillment amid grinding work.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Garcia's formal ambition in weaving documentary and heightened imagery insists the marginalized be seen as bearers of a fully realized inner life. Sundance jury prize well earned.
Day laborers as dreamers, customized pickup trucks as intimacy. The Malick/Burnett comparisons set a brutal bar, but the specificity of jornaleros and their trucks is too good to dismiss. Cautiously interested.
Day laborers' dreams intercut with Home Depot parking-lot reality, with magical-realist sequences threading the labor and the spirit — that's a generous formal choice for a subject usually flattened by docu-realism. 17 minutes to make the argument.
Reviews
There are shades of Guinness 'Sapeurs' to this short film directed by Jazmin Garcia... They work hard, but, like the Sapeurs, they also dream hard.
Festivals
- Sundance Film Festival 2025, Short Film Jury Award: U.S. Fiction