American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez

Before Hollywood knew his name, Luis Valdez was staging plays off the back of a flatbed truck for striking farmworkers in Delano, California. American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez traces his rise from the fields to Broadway and Hollywood: founding El Teatro Campesino in 1965, becoming the first Chicano director to bring a play to Broadway with Zoot Suit in 1979, and writing and directing the 1987 hit La Bamba. Built from rarely seen archival footage of Valdez's theater and television work, including more than 80,000 feet of 1970s film rescued and digitized for the first time, the film is narrated by Edward James Olmos in the pachuco voice he originated in Zoot Suit, and features Cheech Marin, Lou Diamond Phillips, Dolores Huerta, Taylor Hackford, and Linda Ronstadt. Winner of the U.S. Documentary Audience Award and the Festival Favorite Award at Sundance 2026 and the Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film.

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