When 15-year old Emilio Monreal is dragged to Mexico City after his mother’s divorce, he finds his tribe among the city’s emo scene. Teenage Riot is a feature film account of the stranger-than-fiction punk vs. emo riots of 2008, where youths battled in the streets for their right to exist.
Alejandra Vasquez is a Mexican-American filmmaker raised between rural Texas and the San Francisco Bay Area. Her award-winning films spotlight youth, art & culture, and convey a cinematic sense of place in rural and borderland environments. Her feature directorial debut, GOING VARSITY IN MARIACHI (co-directed with Sam Osborn), premiered at Sundance 2023, won the Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award in the U.S. Documentary Competition, and is now streaming on Netflix.
Her short films include “Folk Frontera” (Independent Lens), winner of Best Texas Short at SXSW; “Baca” (LA Times Short Docs), commissioned by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA); and “When It’s Good, It’s Good” (POV Shorts), a co-production with Latino Public Broadcasting currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.
Alejandra began her career as a producer, contributing to acclaimed documentaries such as MATANGI/MAYA/M.I.A. (2018), US KIDS (2020), PLAN C (2023), and most recently co-produced NIGHT IS NOT ETERNAL (2024). She also produced the short docs "Stalin Boys" (SXSW Winner, NYT OpDocs) and exec produced "A New Inferno" (SXSW, NYT Op Docs).
Now based in Los Angeles, Alejandra co-founded Masa Films with her partner Sam Osborn, where they are developing, producing, and directing nonfiction and scripted projects. They are prepping their first scripted project TEEN AGE RIOT with support from the Film Independent Screenwriting Lab and Antigravity Academy. She's also writing HALF ORANGE with support from the SFFILM Rainin Grant. She was awarded the Concordia Fellowship in 2026.
