Fan Casting Coco

The Rivera family history is told, explaining that its patriarch Isaias was the husband of a musician who left him and his son Coco to pursue a career in music. To support both of them, he turned to shoemaking which became the family business, and began a tradition which to this day bans music in the Riveras. His great-great-granddaughter, 12-year-old Mira, lives with Coco, who is his elderly great-grandfather, and the rest of his descendants in the small, fictional Mexican village of Santa Cecilia. She secretly dreams of becoming a musician like her idol, the late Eliana de la Cruz, a popular singer and film star who died in a performance when a stage worker accidentally dropped a giant bell on hier Mira keeps a secret hideout with many memorabilia from de la Cruz and she is everyday discouraged by her family about becoming a musician. When Mira tries to enter a talent show for the Day of the Dead, her Abuelito destroys her guitar when she tried to convince him to see her play. Hurt, Mira runs off to the talent show to perform anyway. While finding a guitar to use, Mira then discovers something hidden in the photo of Isaias – taken with his wife and an infant Coco – at the center of the family ofrenda: his wife (whose face is ripped out) was holding the guitar famously used by Eliana.