Flatbread Friends

This animated documentary short explores how food and memory shape humanity and connections to one another. Rubí and Sabiha are two friends in El Paso, Texas, whose memories conjured by the wheat tortilla are worlds apart.

Rubí is originally from Morelos, a southern Mexican state where corn is king. To her, the wheat tortilla symbolizes Spanish colonial and Anglo cultural adaptation. After moving to northern Mexico as a young girl, Rubí spoke and ate differently from her new border-dwelling peers, and the food reminds her of the rejection she felt then. For Sabiha, the film’s director, the tortilla is an incarnation of the whole wheat roti, a comforting staple of her Punjabi heritage. Seeing these familiar dough circles hand-rolled in El Paso’s burrito shops brought her joyful recognition.

Both women reflect on the legacies embedded in these ancient foods—histories of Indigenous sovereignty, colonization, and Old World adaptation to local ingredients. Their friendship and conversation unfold in the Paso del Norte region, a historic trade route that predates Spanish colonization. It has long provided sustenance for travelers and a home for varied populations, from China, the Levant, and beyond. The area now houses the I-10 freeway, a common route for travelers and truckers driving between the East and West coasts. The film uses 2D cutout animation to illustrate the region’s culinary culture and sheds light on the diversity of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands.