Real Women Have Curves (2002)

America Ferrera, in her first film, plays a first-generation Mexican American graduate in East Los Angeles who wants college and a writing life, while her mother, played by Lupe Ontiveros, wants her in the family's small textile factory and married off. The two shared a Special Jury Prize for Acting at Sundance, where the film also won the dramatic Audience Award. Their fights about bodies, weight and what a daughter owes are blunt and often funny, and the film sides with the daughter without ever turning the mother into a villain. Ideal for a mother and daughter who have argued about the same things.