The production of El Norte (1983) encountered major problems with Mexican police while shooting on location in Tijuana. According to director Gregory Nava: "One day, men with machine guns took over the set. I had guns pointed at my head. We were forced to shut down production, bribe our way out of the country, fight to get our costumes back, and start shooting again in California." Nava also recalled that Mexican police kidnapped the film's accountant and held him for ransom, and that his own parents had to pose as tourists to smuggle rolls of exposed film across the U.S. border. Back in California, Nava and his crew had to re-create a movie set of the Mexican shanty town where Rosa and Enrique stay before crossing the border.
The immigration office scene was shot in an actual immigration office in California. David Villalpando and Zaide Silvia Gutiérrez were legitimately anxious while filming this scene, because they did not have official working papers that would have permitted them to work legally in the United States and were only carrying travel visas. Fortunately, none of the actual immigration officers second-guessed.
Roger Ebert noted in his review that Zaide Silvia Gutiérrez is terrified of rats in real life, but insisted that the filmmakers use actual (domesticated and trained) rats for the scene where she goes through an underground tunnel to reach the U.S.
El Norte (1983) was originally shot for TV to premiere on PBS in 1983. But after an overwhelmingly positive reception at the Telluride Film Festival, the producers of American Playhouse decided to give the film a theatrical release and delayed the PBS TV-premiere for two years.
In 1995, El Norte (1983) was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
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