Circo (2011)

Tino Ponce operates Circo Mexico which journeys across the Mexican countryside in search of paying customers Wanting to please his father and continue the family business Ponce has recruited his young children as performers while laboring night and day to maintain the circuss faltering financial fortunes But a growing resentment brewing within his wife about their hardscrabble existence suggests troubles on the horizon While documenting the brutal regimen of circus life Circo also peels back the curtain on the Ponce familys inner dynamics revealing generational divides and money worries that threaten to tear apart a marriage Buttressed by indierock band Calexicos evocative score Schocks film observes this family drama with a sympathetic but cleareyed view of a vanishing way of life And because Circo refuses to be sentimental in its handling of the material the storys twists become all the more poignant