After his father is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, an aimless stoner wrestles with himself, troubled love and the law to save his family’s sandwich shop from going up in smoke.

SYNOPSIS:

Gio, 23, has just graduated college and face-planted into adult life. Mired in a fruitless cycle of sending job applications into a black hole and smoking copious amounts of marijuana, Gio is troubled with the man-boy he's become. He works for his father, Lu, in the family sandwich shop, ¡Tortas y Más! Despite the steady paycheck, Gio yearns for the self-fulfillment he thought society had promised him, but the universe has bigger problems in store.

Gio discovers Lu has pancreatic cancer, and the shop will soon shutter due to medical bills and the COVID-19 fallout. With the help of Lu's other employee, Ava, and Gio's best friend and pot dealer, Dash, a new generation comes together to save Tempe, Arizona's fading Mexican sandwich haven. Sales explode when they add Ava's own banh mi sandwiches to the menu, and an unexpected romance emerges between her and Gio. Dash is none too pleased with this development, and soon derails their winning streak when police learn he's been covertly selling weed through the restaurant.

Gio becomes ensnared in the legal and political firestorm of a return to local "tough-on-crime" drug policies, and ¡Tortas y Más! appears to be no más. Gio realizes just how good he had it when his biggest concern was self-actualization, and that you needn't always wait your turn for life to beat you down. But Gio has also learned that the further we fall, the further we rise, and Gio's final act isn’t over by a long shot.

All the Guac is a story about today’s working-class American, filled with diverse characters who share the same concerns as audiences across the globe. If the 2014 box-office hit Chef and the 1983 classic Terms of Endearment got Half Baked and had a love child, it would surely be this witty, slice-of-life drama. With placements including Academy Nicholl Fellowships 2017 (Top 15%) and Rhode Island International Film Festival 2017 (Semifinalist), I smell a successful art house run and big streaming numbers with this screenplay, so please, do stay for the tortas.