Campeón Gabacho Explores Identity, Belonging Through Boxing Lens

If you think you’re about to sit down and watch another boxing movie, think again. Campeón Gabacho is about much more than an underdog rising through the ranks to prove their worth in the ring.

The new drama, which stars former Batgirl lead Leslie Grace, uses boxing as just one piece of a much larger, more emotional story about identity, belonging, and the immigrant experience. Directed by Jonás Cuarón and based on Aura Xilonen’s novel, the film tells the story of Liborio, an endearing and mischievous young migrant whose only talent is “taking punches.” After crossing the Rio Grande to escape a harsh reality in Mexico, he makes it to the United States, settling in the Latino barrio in New York City, where he’s determined to make a better life for himself in an unknown land. And while he faces challenges — and prejudices along the way — it’s in this new home that Liborio finds community, love, and purpose, becoming an unlikely boxer and a symbol of resilience against adversity.

ScreenRant’s Ash Crossan spoke with Cuarón and some of the film’s cast at SXSW, in Austin, Texas, last week, where they emphasized that while boxing may be the hook, Campeón Gabacho is ultimately about something far deeper: a coming-of-age journey shaped by community, chosen family, and the power of telling stories on your own terms.

Jonás Cuarón: Well, Campeón Gabacho is the story of an immigrant kid living in New York trying to find his place, and he finds it through boxing, but mostly through the community and family he builds along the way. So it’s based on a novel by Aura Xilonen. She wrote it when she was just 18 and invented a new language for the novel, which she called Ingleñol. It’s a mixture of English, Spanish, and made-up words. And I found this language very lyrical and exciting. And so it inspired me to make a movie that was fun, dynamic, and imaginative. But I was also inspired that it approached the subject of immigration from a very human perspective. At the end, it’s a coming-of-age story, the story of a teenager trying to define himself.

I’ve always connected a lot with stories about immigration, but I found this a very refreshing take. It really stops approaching the idea of an immigrant as a concept, and it really brings us inside his head, and shows us a teenager who just wants to dream and be in love. And I think it’s a very emotive movie.

For Rubén Blades, who plays Abcuc, boxing was just a vehicle to advance Liborio’s story, with his character serving as a mentor to the young immigrant, as he encourages him to pursue boxing — but much more than that, helps him find his purpose.

Rubén Blades: Actually, I thought the script was very, very intelligent to be made, because the movie’s not what people expect. And this is important because people may assume that Campeón Gabacho is just a movie about boxing, and it is not. It’s just immense — part of the evolution of life in this particular take. This young man, who all of a sudden ends up where he ends up just by chance. And my character was very interesting, because immediately when I read the script, I built a background story, and I wanted to have this man — he’s got a funny name, Abacuc. He had a background of difficulty, and had probably been abused when he was a child, and he had a rough life, and he ended up creating this place where he gave shelter to abandoned children, and treated them with the respect and the attention that they needed, and they probably did not have, and wanted when he was younger. And then they bring an older kid [Liborio] to his shelter for children, and then he finds in the kid, sort of a reflection of himself when he was younger, and then he tries to give him the benefit of his own experience and pain, to see if he can help and find his way. So it was a really wonderful, wonderful character possibility.

Campeón Gabacho also marked the first time Blades said in his decades-long career that he’s spoken Spanish in a film, something he told ScreenRant he felt “very, very, very happy about.”

Rubén Blades: I’m very grateful to Jonás and the team, because it was really wonderful … one of the problems that we’ve had is that, and mostly in colonized countries, countries that suffer colonization, is to break away from it, and see ourselves for what we are, and not through what other people expect us to be. And one of the things that we can find that is very helpful in unlearning colonization complexes is to think about how we express who we are, and one way to do it effectively is through film. Instead of waiting to have Hollywood call us to do an English movie, which probably will never happen, not at the level of attention our stories deserve, then we should create our own stories and present them, and not be thinking of Oscars and Emmys and stuff, but just look at what we do, and then have people support that.

A lot of people see a movie in Spanish, and they’d rather see one in English for some reason. I look at movies in English, in French, in German, in whatever language… and so we should tell our own stories. It is very important that people like Jonás are doing that.

Everything The Campeón Gabacho Cast & Team Said About The Film

Campeon Gabacho cast at SXSWScreenRant

ScreenRant: I want to kind of get a rundown of the characters, and just tell me who they are and what you connected with about the story.

Leslie Grace: Well, I got to play Irene, who becomes really good friends with Liborio. She has a tough exterior at times in the film, especially when you first meet her, but you find out that she’s very vulnerable. She’s going through some hard things with her family at the point that we meet her. And I think that kind of bit of a moment of questioning why certain things are happening in her life, allows her to have empathy for Liborio when they do meet, and creates a space for them to have a friendship where they get to kind of escape a lot of the hard things that they’re going through at that particular point in time, and just kind of imagine a place for themselves.

And I personally, just really connected to her, because I felt that there are a lot of times all of us have to kind of build certain masks to move through the world, and get through things that come with life that might not be so easy, but there’s a gift in friendship where, if you have good friends, you get to put those masks down, and put those shields down, and imagine something a little more simple for yourself in those small moments.

Juan Daniel García: I was telling Jonás that when I watched the movie, I thought of myself. I identified with myself, because I come from a small barrio in Monterrey, and I thought of my own migration. I connected most again with the migration I made from Monterrey to Mexico City to make my first movie, and there I found people asking me what I thought, what I felt, celebrating me as a person, and this was new for me. It’s like a little bit of what happens to Liborio in the movie, where he finds his own language.

Jonás Cuarón: I think for me, as I said, the movie was inspired a lot by this idea of the Ingleñol, the language Aura created in her novel, which is a mixture of English and Spanish. And so to me, I’ve always been very interested in how rich the U.S. is in the language sense, and how the immigrant community, at the end, brings a lot to that richness. So, in developing the movie, the movie has a lot of English and Spanish, and I really wanted to showcase that. And so, when I started working with Rubén, we debated whether that character would speak in English or Spanish. And since it is the point in the movie where Liborio starts finding a home, we wanted to showcase in that realm, the Spanish. In the same way, there’s just a really beautiful relationship between the two of them, where Leslie speaks in English, and he responds in Spanish, and they both understand. So, I really wanted this movie to show the fluidity of the language.

ScreenRant: Absolutely. We are here at SXSW. It’s the intersection of movies and music. Have you been able to kind of pop around at all? Is there anything you’ve gotten to do, eat, see?

Jonás Cuarón: I think this festival, the musical aspect of this festival, the movie has a very unique soundtrack, and that’s one of the things that — I came to this festival once 18 years ago, and I became enamored by how vibrant and how rich the audience is, but I also thought that it was very special that this year it collided with music, because it’s a movie where music plays a really important part. I really wanted to showcase this idea of a Latin neighborhood in the U.S. through its rich musical culture.

Campeón Gabacho premiered March 17 at SXSW. As of now, there’s no official theatrical release date yet.

Location

Austin, Texas

Description

The SXSW Conference is an annual event held in Austin, Texas, that celebrates the convergence of technology, film, music, education, and culture. It features a diverse range of programming, including keynote speeches, panel discussions, exhibitions, networking events, and live performances, attracting professionals, creators, and innovators from around the world to explore new ideas and emerging trends.

Dates

March 12–18, 2026

Be sure to dive into some of ScreenRant’s other SXSW coverage with:

The Sun Never Sets Review

The Fox Review

I Love Boosters Review

Dead Eyes Review

One Another Review

Kill Me Review

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come Review

The Saviors Review

Family Movie Review