While Sin Nombre brings a story of hope to the thousands of brutal tales about immigration from Central America to the United States, it also reinvents the western––our most classic genre of people striking out for a better life. The elements are all there––the vast landscapes, the frontier justice, the gangs of outlaws, and a train noisily slicing through the frontier. They are just re-organized in a different way.

The western, even before movies, was cinematic. From the moment that cowboy in The Great Train Robbery pointed a gun at us in 1903, it’s been hard to take our eyes off the western. To pay homage to the genre, we asked several of Sin Nombre filmmaking team to list their own five favorite westerns.