American Me

In American Me, Edward James Olmos, making his debut as a feature film director, reveals a tragic world of violence… a culture destroying itself from within, where prison is the school that turns children into callous murderers. American Me explores three generations of a Hispanic-American family, beginning with the Pachuco riots in Los Angeles in 1943 and ending in the mid-1970’s. The film chronicles the rise of a ruthless crimelord named Santana, played by Olmos, who was sentenced to prison as a young man along with two comrades yet survives by forming a "gang of gangs". This alliance comes to be known as the EME -- the Mexican Mafia -- the first and most powerful of prison gangs in the California penal system that, in time, draws strength from 'the system’ and begins to feed on the streets of Santana’s own neighbourhood.