El Norte
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40 free El Norte trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Gregory Nava's El Norte follows Enrique and Rosa, a Maya brother and sister who survive a massacre in their highland village and set out for the United States. Made on a small budget outside the studio system, it earned an Academy Award nomination and has become a staple of American classrooms. This quiz covers the whole film: the family's life before the soldiers arrive, the journey through Mexico, the border crossing, and the jobs, friendships and setbacks that follow in California. It also looks at how the film got made, from its public-television backing to a shoot that was shut down at gunpoint, along with the cast, the music and the awards. It suits students who have just watched the film in class, film-club members and anyone revisiting a classic of immigrant cinema. Every question comes with a short explanation, so you learn something even when you miss.
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Q 01In El Norte, which animals swarm Enrique and Rosa as they crawl under the border into California?
Rats
Rats attack the pair in the film's most harrowing scene, and they were real: disease-free animals bought from a laboratory. The actress playing Rosa had a phobia of them but insisted on doing the scene herself.
Q 02From which Central American country do Enrique and Rosa flee at the start of El Norte?
Guatemala
Guatemala was then deep in a civil war in which the army wiped out whole Maya villages, the persecution that drives the pair from home.
Q 03Working as a maid in El Norte, Rosa is baffled by which household appliance her employer shows her?
A washing machine
A washing machine with a bewildering set of controls defeats Rosa, so she spreads the clothes out on the grass to dry in the sun instead.
Q 04What does the title of Gregory Nava's immigration drama El Norte mean in English?
The North
The North is the characters' name for the United States, which Enrique and Rosa come to imagine as a promised land.
Q 05Which California city is the destination where Enrique and Rosa find work in El Norte's final part?
Los Angeles
Los Angeles is where the pair land jobs and English classes, and the filmmakers spent years researching among exiles living in Southern California.
Q 06Which hit biopic did El Norte director Gregory Nava go on to write and direct?
Selena
Selena made a star of Jennifer Lopez and reunited Nava with one of his El Norte actresses, cast as the singer's killer, Yolanda Saldívar.
Q 07Which disease, caught during the border crossing, kills Rosa at the end of El Norte?
Typhus
Typhus strikes just as Enrique is due to fly out for a better job, forcing him to choose between the plane and his sister's bedside.
Q 08Why do soldiers murder Enrique and Rosa's father, Arturo, in the first part of El Norte?
He was forming a union
He was forming a union among the plantation workers when a bribed co-worker betrayed the organizers' meeting to the army.
Q 09Which actress, later the housekeeper Rosalita in The Goonies, plays Rosa's friend Nacha in El Norte?
Lupe Ontiveros
Lupe Ontiveros reckoned she had played a maid at least 150 times, yet she named El Norte as the favorite film of her long career.
Q 10Which crop do Arturo and his fellow villagers pick for plantation bosses in El Norte's opening part?
Coffee
Coffee is picked under the eyes of intimidating overseers, and Roger Ebert wrote that the killings that follow are the price paid for our morning cup.
Q 11Enrique and Rosa finally slip into the United States in El Norte by crawling through what?
An old sewer pipe
An old sewer pipe gets them across on their second try; the first ended when a man posing as a guide tried to rob them.
Q 12As a boy, El Norte director Gregory Nava often crossed the border into which Mexican city?
Tijuana
Tijuana, where he had relatives, later supplied locations for the film; as a boy he wondered who lived in the cardboard shacks there.
Q 13Which U.S. city's lights do Enrique and Rosa see on emerging from their border crossing in El Norte?
San Diego
San Diego is also where Gregory Nava grew up, and the gulf between it and the shacks across the fence was the seed of the story.
Q 21After Rosa's death, the closing scenes of El Norte show Enrique returning to which kind of work?
Day labor
Day labor means waiting in a parking lot to be picked by a man looking for muscle, just as Enrique did when he first arrived.
Q 22Which PBS drama anthology series supplied half of the financing for El Norte?
American Playhouse
American Playhouse put up half the money; the rest came from pre-sales, one of them to Britain's Channel 4.
Q 23El Norte earned Gregory Nava and Anna Thomas an Academy Award nomination in which category?
Best Original Screenplay
Best Original Screenplay was the nomination shared by the then-married writing team, whose film had been half financed by public television.
Q 14A businesswoman in El Norte offers Enrique a better-paid foreman's job in which American city?
Chicago
Chicago is an offer he first turns down; he changes his mind only after a jealous co-worker reports him to immigration agents.
Q 15Enrique's first steady work in El Norte is which job at an upscale California restaurant?
Busboy
Busboy is only his first rung: once his English classes pay off, he is promoted to waiter's assistant.
Q 16Before becoming a maid in El Norte, Rosa's first job in California is at which kind of workplace?
A garment factory
A garment factory gives Rosa her start, until an immigration raid she barely escapes forces her to find a new job.
Q 17El Norte's middle chapter, about crossing Mexico, takes its one-word title from which animal?
Coyote
Coyote is border slang for a paid guide who smuggles migrants across, and the pair are cheated by a fake one before finding an honest one.
Q 18How do Enrique and Rosa convince a U.S. Border Patrol officer in El Norte that they are Mexican?
By swearing constantly
By swearing constantly, as a neighbor had coached them, they get themselves sent back only as far as the border instead of all the way home.
Q 19Which American magazine shapes Enrique and Rosa's picture of the United States in El Norte?
Good Housekeeping
Good Housekeeping issues treasured by their godmother Josefita show a land where even the poor seem to own a refrigerator.
Q 20What is the Maya surname shared by Enrique, Rosa and their father Arturo in El Norte?
Xuncax
Xuncax also heads the film's first chapter, which is titled in full after the doomed father.
Q 24Roger Ebert's review likened El Norte to which American classic?
The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath was his comparison in a four-star review that praised the film's blend of visual beauty, melodrama and anger.
Q 25Which U.S. institution selected El Norte in 1995 for its National Film Registry?
Library of Congress
National Film Registry titles are picked as culturally, historically or aesthetically significant by the Library of Congress, and El Norte joined just twelve years after its premiere.
Q 26Posing as tourists, Gregory Nava's parents smuggled what out of Mexico in suitcases for El Norte?
Exposed film
Exposed film already shot for the picture left the country in their luggage during a shoot that armed men eventually shut down.
Q 27During El Norte's shoot in Mexico, which crew member did Nava say police kidnapped for ransom?
The accountant
The accountant was held for ransom, and after gunmen took over the set the crew had to bribe their way out and start again in California.
Q 28After El Norte's shoot moved to California, who did Gregory Nava say played the village extras?
Maya refugees
Real Maya refugees living in California filled the rebuilt village, the very people, Nava said, that the movie was about.
Q 29El Norte's co-writer and producer Anna Thomas first made her name with which 1972 cookbook?
The Vegetarian Epicure
The Vegetarian Epicure, written while she was still a film student, became a touchstone of the natural foods movement.
Q 30Which American concert work, later heard in the war film Platoon, plays at two points in El Norte?
Adagio for Strings
Adagio for Strings, by Samuel Barber, has long been music for mourning, played after the deaths of Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy.