Vanessa Martinez

Casa de los babys -- In this John Sayles drama, Marcia Gay Harden, Daryl Hannah, Lili Taylor, Mary Steenburgen and others star as American women who travel to South America to adopt newborn babies.

Limbo -- Three people are forced to take risks and confront their fears when they find themselves stranded in the wilderness of an Alaskan island.

In Casa de los Babys, director John Sayles turns his attention to an unspecified Latin country where a group of American women wait to adopt a child. The film stars an ensemble cast of Maggie Gyllenhaal, Daryl Hannah, Marcia Gay Harden, Susan Lynch, Rita Moreno, Mary Steenburgen and Lili Taylor. Each has come for their own reasons and from vastly different backgrounds. Each waits as the adoption applications move slowly through the bureaucracy. Trapped for weeks in an exotic hotel run by the enigmatic Senora Munoz (Rita Moreno), they expose their opinions, prejudices and insecurities. Casa de los Babys is a sharp, insightful look at clashing cultures, contemporary motherhood and the mysteries of fate. We meet these six very different, very modern women on the verge of a life-changing event, wondering what will happen next. They have taken different pathways toward foreign adoption. One is a single mother, another has financial worries, one endures a shaky marriage, and yet another has suffered the deaths of her own infant children. As they fulfill the country’s residency requirement, they spend their time together. The women shop, go to the beach, eat, and assemble a temporary community as they wait for their babies to arrive. They are vulnerable, wounded, immature, generous, loving. As he does in all of his films, Sayles has created a canvas that encompasses the full range of human emotions. As much as they try to fit in, they are strangers in a strange land. In a truly foreign, complicated and tropical setting, they deal with some of life's biggest issues. Casa de los Babys is provocative, humorous and touching. It is life in progress. No one can say what will happen to these babies and their new mothers, but the ending is a presentation of questions and promise.

In writer-director John Sayles's drama, six American women, frustrated with the lengthy adoption process in America, travel to a Latin American country to adopt impoverished children. But they find the bureaucracy just as discouraging there. While they wait for months in a local motel, the women share the stories of how they ended up taking such drastic measures to have a child. Maggie Gyllenhaal, Marcia Gay Harden and Mary Steenburgen star.

In this John Sayles drama, Marcia Gay Harden, Daryl Hannah, Lili Taylor, Mary Steenburgen and others star as American women who travel to South America to adopt newborn babies.

In this John Sayles drama, Marcia Gay Harden, Daryl Hannah, Lili Taylor, Mary Steenburgen and others star as American women who travel to South America to adopt newborn babies.

Three people are forced to take risks and confront their fears when they find themselves stranded in the wilderness of an Alaskan island.

Three people are forced to take risks and confront their fears when they find themselves stranded in the wilderness of an Alaskan island.

Alaska is America's last frontier, a land rich with the promise of adventure and the possibility of redemption. This vast expanse of raw nature is both setting and antagonist in John Sayles' Limbo, the story of three people who come together to face their own demons and to learn the very nature of risk. In the rugged beauty of the southeastern Alaska wilderness, former fisherman Joe Gastineau (David Strathairn) struggles with the memory of an accident at sea that nearly took his life. Fortunately, a budding romance with a sultry singer named Donna De Angelo (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) gives him hope. But when Joe's fast-talking half-brother (Casey Siemaszko) returns to town and asks Joe for a favor, the lives of Joe, Donna and her disaffected daughter, Noelle (Vanessa Martinez), are changed forever

Limbo -- Alaska is America's last frontier, a land rich with the promise of adventure and the possibility of redemption. This vast expanse of raw nature is both setting and antagonist in John Sayles' Limbo, the story of three people who come together to face their own demons and to learn the very nature of risk. In the rugged beauty of the southeastern Alaska wilderness, former fisherman Joe Gastineau (David Strathairn) struggles with the memory of an accident at sea that nearly took his life. Fortunately, a budding romance with a sultry singer named Donna De Angelo (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) gives him hope. But when Joe's fast-talking half-brother (Casey Siemaszko) returns to town and asks Joe for a favor, the lives of Joe, Donna and her disaffected daughter, Noelle (Vanessa Martinez), are changed forever

In the untamed wilderness along Alaska's coast, feelings and fortunes change as quickly as the tides in this "haunting and hypnotic thriller" (Peter Travers, ROLLING STONE) from critically acclaimed director John Sayles. Traumatized by a boat accident at sea many years before, Joe Gastineau (David Strathairn) has given up his hopes for a life beyond the odd jobs he takes to support himself. That quickly changes when Donna deAngelo (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), bar singer and nomad, and her troubled teenage daughter, Noelle, enter Joe's life. Both mother and daughter fall for Joe, increasing the already-present friction between them. The tension continues to build when Joe captains his ship on a mysterious sea voyage up the Alaskan coast, only discovering, after it's too late, that the trip may end up costing them their lives.