Eli Zavala as Nelly in El Carrito

Eli Zavala as Nelly in El Carrito

Eli Zavala as Nelly in El Carrito

Eli Zavala reveals she embraced street vending in New York City while preparing for her role as Nelly in “El Carrito”.

NYC, NY, USA, November 20, 2021 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Eli Zavala gave a stunning performance as Nelly in “El Carrito”. In the film she plays a street vendor living in Queens, New York, who doesn’t trust anyone but herself. Zavala’s performance is creating quite a buzz at the Festival circuit for her organic portrayal of an immigrant woman pursuing the American Dream.

“El Carrito” is loosely inspired by the 1948 “Bicycle Thieves” directed by Vittorio De Sica, and Zavala’s character, Nelly, is an immigrant woman who keeps her household afloat by selling tamales from a shopping cart on the streets, “something that is not at all far from the truth for many immigrant families” she said in a recent interview. She also added “I wanted to bring my Mexican, immigrant and WOC experience to the character. For me it was utterly important to bring the isolation and fear that comes with leaving the country you were born in, and, at the same time, bring in the excitement that comes from pursuing and slowly getting better opportunities in a foreign land, all while steering away from stereotypical portrayals that could have arisen when giving life to Nelly”.

To achieve this, Zavala found support and mentorship from the female community of street vendors in Queens, New York. While she shadowed them around cooperative kitchens and the streets of NYC where she ended up selling tacos under a bridge in Harlem and in Queens Plaza, she learned the strong bond that street vendors have among themselves and the struggles they face daily. “That was something necessary for me to do in order to immerse fully in the world of street vending, and most of all, to respectfully portray Nelly who represents the tens of thousands of street vendors not only here [in New York City], but all over the world, and let me tell you: that was really hard, because street vendors really are small business owners that get up before the sunrise and barely get any rest, and yet, they manage to maintain certain optimism that I personally relate with the Latinx culture, especially the Mexican approach to life” said the actress before adding “and, even though, in the story I was vending without a permit, which causes a lot of troubles and allows the story to unfold, in real life, street vendors have to comply and follow strict laws like every other food establishment, with the downside that permits are quite limited and top that with the stigma that comes from buying food from a small grocery cart. I witnessed first-hand the enormous amount of labor, care and passion these women put into preparing tacos and tamales and all those delicious foods, and how hard it can be that a lot of people don’t even see or pay attention to them while walking around the City, or any major city for that matter.”

Whatever methods Zavala employed, they were effective because her performance is simply sublime, crowing the film as a solid piece of cinema praised in every aspect and framed with an astonishing cinematography.

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