En el séptimo día (English: On the Seventh Day) is a 2017 American Spanish-language independent drama film directed by Jim McKay. Set over the course of seven days, the film depicts a group of undocumented Mexican immigrants living in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, who form a soccer team.
José, a bicycle delivery worker, leads a soccer team of undocumented immigrants from Puebla, Mexico. As the championship game approaches the coming Sunday, José's boss demands that he work that day for a private party.
Cast
Fernando Cardona as José
Gilberto Jimenez as Elmer
Abel Perez as Jesús
Genoel Ramírez as Artemio
Alfonso Velasquez as Felix
Alejandro Huitzil as Nacho
Gilberto Arenas as Alfonso
Ricardo Gonzalez as Ricardo
Eduardo Espinosa as Juan
Ernesto Lucero as Baltasar
Mathia Vargas as Lisa
Production
McKay first conceived of the story in October 2001.[5] The project was shelved for over a decade as McKay went on to direct Everyday People (2004), Angel Rodriguez (2005), and several television series until he resumed working on the film in 2015. The script was inspired in part by the book Mexican New York by Robert Smith, which studies a community of migrants from the state of Puebla, Mexico, to Sunset Park, Brooklyn.[6] McKay said, "[I]nspired by this book, the idea that though we might live in the melting pot of New York City, we are often territorial, rarely venturing into or getting to know surrounding neighborhoods a stone's throw away, came into focus once again."[5]
The main cast consisted entirely of non-professional actors who were Mexican immigrants, most of whom had come from Sunset Park. The casting process began in the summer of 2015 and lasted for seven months. Each actor was cast without determining which character in the script he would play, and the roles were finally assigned after a period of script reading and soccer practices. Filming took place over the course of 19 days in June and July 2016, in the neighborhoods of Sunset Park, Park Slope, and Gowanus.[5][7]
Reception
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 100% based on 31 reviews, with an average rating of 8.2/10.[8] On Metacritic, the film has a score 87 out of 100, based on 14 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[9]