El Oaxaqueño (Working Title)

Leyver Martinez is finally released after 13 years in California prison and is ready to return to his family in the Bay Area. But as a child, he was brought to the U.S. without authorization, and so he is faced with immediate deportation. Now, at age 31, after spending most of his adult life behind bars, he suddenly finds himself on the other side of the Mexican border.

After years of fearing a return, Leyver arrives in his hometown of Oaxaca to reunite with his extended family and is surprised to find a sense of belonging as he connects to the people and culture. But rejected by the U.S., Leyver discovers he is still an outsider in his new home. And he misses his wife, son, and parents in California, now further away than ever. He wants to be a father to his child for the first time outside of prison. And as the coronavirus pandemic begins, the family’s options grow more limited, and their relationship is tested by the separation.

El Oaxaqueño is the intense and personal portrait of one man and his family, tracing the choices they make and those imposed upon them. The film chronicles Leyver’s roots in Oakland and the violence and trauma he experienced before and during his time in prison. While confined to a cell, he begins a transformation that continues through his return to a place that intimately shaped him but that he had hardly known, leading to an exploration of belonging and the meaning of home.