Rosario (Kate del Castillo) is a determined single parent who entered the United States illegally four years ago and now works as a domestic in Los Angeles. She talks on the phone every week to her son Carlitos (Adrian Alonso) who lives with his grandmother (Angelina Pelaez) in Mexico. He misses his mother desperately and wants her to come back home if she can't arrange for him to live with her in America. Carlitos sees firsthand the wide variety of Mexicans who want to emigrate while working for Carmen (Carmen Salina), who runs a business getting people across the border.
When his grandmother dies, this energetic and courageous nine-year-old contacts two Mexican-American students (Jesse Garcia and America Ferrera) who need cash and are looking for someone to take to the United States as a stowaway in their car. In the first of a series of blunders and setbacks, Carlitos finds himself stranded when the vehicle is impounded by border officials. After he loses his money, he falls into the hands of a drug addict, but he is rescued by a woman active in the immigrant community. She puts him in touch with some men working in Texas picking tomatoes. He sees first-hand how dangerous this can be when one of the workers gets pesticide residue in his eyes.
When the tomato farm is raided by the INS, Carlitos escapes with Enrique (Eugenio Derbez). They hitchhike to Tucson where Carlitos gets them some part-time work in a restaurant. After a couple days there, they catch a bus to Los Angeles where the young boy hopes to be reunited with his mother.
"Americans alternate between hospitality and paranoia about newcomers, between a promiscuous inclusiveness and a nativist recoil," Time magazine essayist Lance Morrow has observed. Right now, the tide seems to be turning against illegal immigrants. This movie directed by Patricia Riggen and written by Ligiah Villalobos is definitely on the side of Rosario and her enterprising son whose spiritual quest to be with his mother is heart-rending. Luckily, he finds many along the way who are willing to help him and provide the encouragement he needs.
During the same week, Rosario must square off against her own challenges. She already feels guilty for leaving her son, telling her friend, "He doesn't know why I left. He only knows I left him." After a nasty and bigoted white woman fires her, she wonders if she should agree to a marriage of convenience to Paco (Gabriel Porras), a Chicano security guard who has a green card. Unaware that Carlitos is making his way cross-country to California, she considers going back to Mexico.
Under the Same Moon takes its title from Rosario's advice to her son that each evening he should look at the moon and realize that it is the same one she is looking at and thinking of him. This soul-stirring movie enables us to look at the moon and empathize with all illegal immigrants who live under it in America picking vegetables, processing meat, cleaning houses, and doing other jobs in order to make a better life for themselves and their loved ones.
Special DVD features include featurettes: "The Making of La Misma Luna and "The Murals of La Misma Luna.
