By Gregory Berger

In this ironic satire, filmmaker Greg Berger takes on the theme of Mexican perspectives of the United States, its citizens, and its imperial project by turning them on their ear. During the invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003, a misplaced gringo in Mexico City helplessly watches the atrocities through the lens of Mexican television news. His despair turns to hope when he observes some of the millions of Mexico City street vendors who fight their own daily “war” for survival on the streets.

Tongue planted firmly in cheek, the film shows how their tenacity inspires him to take to the streets of Mexico’s capital, when, in stark role reversal, he sells chewing gum and washes windows to raise money for a guerrilla army to take out Bush. With his shorts, Hawaiian shirt, and horrendously mangled Mexican slang, Berger’s hapless gringo still manages to elicit support for his cause from the bemused Mexicans he meets. GRINGO-THON is an expression of protest from an expatriate living abroad, and also a subversive and wickedly funny meditation on the complexities of “gringo” identity in an American continent whose millions of inhabitants misunderstand each other.