Produced for KCET's “Visions” series, Robert Young's Alambrista! was featured at most major international film festivals in 1978-79. Last September, it was presented in New York's Lincoln Center as part of the “American Independents” Festival co-sponsored by the Film Fund and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, where it was introduced with this note:
“Throughout the body of his work, from Nothing But a Man (Southern blacks) through Short Eyes (New York street people in prison) to the current Rich Kids (upper middle-class New Yorkers), Robert M. Young has shown a remarkable ability to evoke the inner reality of a wide range of cultures. In Alambrista! he turns his eye to Mexican farmworkers who migrate illegally to the United States in order to find work. The film never preaches; it simply shows the farmworkers' lives as they are. Especially noteworthy are the fine performances by Domingo Ambriz as the illegal migrant, Linda Gillin as a waitress he falls in love with, Ned Beatty as an Anglo people-smuggler, and a Chaplinesque Trinidad Silva, who shows the protagonist the tricks of surviving in America. Alambrista! won the Camera d'Or Award at the 1978 Cannes Film Festival.”