Ojai Filmmaker to Bring Latest Work to Camarillo : Benefit screening of ‘My Family’ is set for April 19. Director says saga of East L.A. clan will appeal to people from different ethnic groups.

The new film by Ojai director Gregory Nava will have a benefit screening April 19 at the Edwards Camarillo Palace 12.

“My Family,” or “Mi Familia,” is an epic saga that traces the highs and lows of a Chicano family living in East Los Angeles. Nava, director of the acclaimed 1983 film “El Norte,” said it’s not just a film for Latinos.

“This is a story about family,” Nava said. “It appeals to people across different groups. Everybody comes from a family.”

The story starts in Mexico in the 1920s when, as a young man, the family patriarch leaves his village to find his last remaining relative who lives in Los Angeles. The story checks in on the family again in the 1950s, when his children are young adults. Conflicts between the Mexican-born parents and the California-born children turn the family upside down and set the stage for the final act, a 1980s reconciliation among generations.

Jimmy Smits, Esai Morales and Edward James Olmos are the headliners in what is otherwise an ensemble cast. New Line will distribute the movie, which is co-produced by Francis Ford Coppola.

Tickets are $25 for the screening and $125 for the screening and a reception with cast members. The film will benefit the El Rio gymnasium construction project. The basketball team at Rio de Valle Junior High School now has to play outdoors.

To order tickets, call Rosanne Gallien Baker in county Supervisor John Flynn’s office at 654-2706.

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The Wallace Theater in Santa Paula will open in less than two weeks. No, really.

Opening of the six-screen theater has been delayed at least three times because of weather. But construction manager Bryan Gilbert said the last remaining obstacle, paving the parking lot, should be out of the way by next week so the theater can open April 17.

“Once that’s done, we can open,” he said. “The city won’t let us open if people have to walk through dirt to get there.”

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If you’re a fan of magical realism or Marcello Mastroianni, the Ojai Film Society has something for you on Sunday. It’s an Argentine film from 1993, “I Don’t Want to Talk About It.”

The picture is set in a small town that’s idyllic save for one thing: The town’s matron has a daughter who is a dwarf, a fact the wealthy woman has always refused to acknowledge. The daughter befriends a beguiling stranger played by Mastroianni, and the film builds to what reviewers call an utterly surprising climax.

The movie shows at 4:30 p.m. Sunday at the Ojai Playhouse, 145 E. Ojai Ave.