A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints

11 yrs 95 minutes • 2006 • 6.9

The American director Dito Montiel builds on his novel by the same name in the feature film debut A guide to recognizing your saints, which has won awards at both the Venice and Sundance film festivals. The drama takes place among rough neighborhoods in the New York borough of Queens in the 1980s and depicts some young people's transition to adulthood, a hard process fraught with family conflicts, crime, violence, death and drugs. The film's main character, Dito (played by Robert Downey Jr.), returns to his old home after 20 years in Los Angeles to be reunited with his sick father and confronted with the memories of growing up.