Let's Go with Pancho Villa!

Fernando de Fuentes's 1936 Mexican film follows six peasants who join the Revolution of 1910. They give themselves a name and enlist in Pancho Villa's army, having gone to end the suffering in their town, and they are lost one by one in the war. The film does not exalt the revolution. The deaths are not heroic and are often meaningless and accidental; seen close, Villa himself appears as a commander rather than a liberator. That was unusual against the official revolutionary narrative of the period. The production scale was large for those years and the battle sequences were shot with a wide cast. Even so, the film did not find the audience expected on release; it was only later counted among the key works of Mexican cinema. Who it's for: those who like classic Mexican cinema and revolutionary narratives. Who it's not for: viewers expecting an uplifting account of history; the film is bleak to the end.