Melted Hearts screened at the 2010 LDS Film Festival on Friday, January 22 to a packed theater and an enthusiastic audience. The film is about a pair of missionaries, Elder Pedro Rodriguez and Elder Brian Lauper, who have trouble getting along at first. Brian is upset at having been released from his calling as an Assistant to the President, and Pedro has a grudge against Brian because he's American. After they go through some trials together and Brian saves Pedro's life when he gets seriously ill, the two become friends and keep in touch after their missions have ended. In the second half of the film, Brian and his family take a vacation to Mexico, where they meet Pedro, who falls in love with Brian's sister, Wendy. Pedro doesn't have the courage to tell Wendy before she goes back home to Provo, but with the encouragement of his family, he takes heart and hitchhikes from Mexico City to Utah to find her and confess his love.

Melted Hearts is a heart-warming story about gaining courage to follow one's dreams–a story inspired by director Jorge Ramirez Rivera's own experience as a young man of setting off to the United States to pursue an education, against all odds. Even with an inspiring story, however, the film has some flaws. There were several times while watching Melted Hearts that I had to suspend my disbelief. Due to budget and casting concerns, the two missionaries had longish hair, and the actor who played the American Elder Brian Lauper was not a native speaker of English. I was also left wondering how Pedro made it across the border into the United States when he didn't have time to arrange a visa. Many of these concerns in addition to others I had (the plot could have been tighter, the production quality wasn't as high as I was hoping, and some of the errors in the subtitles were distracting) were diminished, though, by the sheer enjoyment of seeing an international, fully subtitled Mormon film–and being in an audience of mixed native English and native Spanish speakers who were all able to fully participate as audience members. The film is half in English and half in Spanish, with both parts subtitled. The cast and crew included English speakers, Spanish speakers, and quite a few bilinguals, which provided an interesting challenge for all involved. In the Q&A after the screening, Jorge Ramirez Rivera said that he believed Melted Hearts is the first international Mormon film. He is hoping to distribute the film on DVD and possibly on some Latin websites. There were other films screened at the LDS Film Festival this year that had foreign flair, in particular Dave Boyle's films Big Dreams Little Tokyo and White on Rice, which I hope mark a new trend in LDS cinema. Jorge Ramirez Rivera's offering is an important step forward in that trend.