Following its successful film festival run, the Mexican-American co-production Son of Monarchs / Hijo de monarcas, the second feature film from French-Venezuelan director and biologist Alexis Gambis, will have its much-anticipated theatrical run this October, followed by its streaming release on HBO Max.
Winner of the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize for the best science or technology-themed film at Sundance and the New American Competition Grand Jury Prize at the Seattle International Film Festival, Son of Monarchs opens in-person on Friday, October 15 at Cinema Village and the Cobble Hill Cinemas in New York City before heading to HBO Max on November 2. The film will also have a sneak preview at the Museum of the Moving Image on Thursday, October 7, with director Gambis in attendance.
Boasting an impressive international cast including Tenoch Huerta (Narcos, Güeros), Alexia Rasmussen, Lázaro Gabino Rodríguez, Noé Hernández, Paulina Gaitán, William Mapother, and Angélica Aragón, the film follows the return of Mendel (Huerta in an outstanding performance), a Mexican biologist living in New York, to his hometown—nestled in the majestic monarch butterfly forests of Michoacán—after his grandmother’s death. The journey forces him to confront past traumas and reflect on his hybrid identity, sparking a personal and spiritual metamorphosis.
Mirroring the annual, instinctual flight of the monarch butterfly across the Americas, the ravishing Son of Monarchs presents a different kind of immigration story that’s at once a welcome departure from standard narratives and a moving innovation of the form.
Watch the trailer:
