The Madera Drive-In has reopened for the 2026 season, and for the past couple of weekends, attendees have been able to see the newest movies while never having to leave their cars.
The classic venue has shared a countless number of films over the years, but never before has its own story been put on the big screen. Until now.
“The Reel Story: All About Family at the Madera Drive-In” is a documentary about how drive-in movie theaters, particularly the Madera Drive-In, are able to foster relationships between families, both for the attendees who bring their families there and the current head of the family business.
For the regular attendees, the drive-in is a place of shared history. Marcos Dorado, director of the documentary and a Fresno State faculty member, said that every person the team interviewed said that going to the drive-in had become a family tradition in some way or another, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.

The Madera Drive-In is currently owned and run by Bobby Gran. His family first purchased the drive-in in 1972 when he was just 14, and Gran grew up working in the drive-in before eventually taking over for his father in the late 80s. Now, Gran looks to pass on the drive-in to his son sometime in the future.
The team behind “The Reel Story: All About Family at the Madera Drive-In” consists of Dorado and Fresno State alumna Lupe López as director and producer respectively, as well as Nathan Montalvo who served as the second camera and provided a lot of the behind-the-scenes shots. Jeremey Miller, a fellow filmmaker, also provided the team with some drone footage for the film.
Working as a photographer for the Fresno State Athletics Department, Dorado had never tried his hand at filmmaking before. With the photography he does both for Fresno State and his own projects, Dorado was always interested in storytelling through a single image.
As he began studying filmmaking earlier this year, he became more interested in how storytelling would work with cinematography. With Montalvo also being a photographer looking to get into filmmaking, and López having some previous experience working on short films like this, an opportunity formed for the team through collaboration with Community Media Access Collaborative (CMAC) and The Big Tell, CMAC’s regional filmmaking program.
“I would really love to do this, so let me explore how I can do this,” Dorado said when explaining his approach. “If I just focus on this, I can figure out how to do it. I’ll go ahead and apply, and if I get denied, oh well, I’m sure I’ll learn something very valuable along the way, no matter what.”
Since he had never worked in filmmaking before, Dorado explained that he shot an 81-second short film on his iPhone to show CMAC what he could do as part of the application process. He then went on to mention that for the actual documentary, he filmed with his two Sony cameras that he uses for photography.
While actually making the documentary, Dorado learned that it wasn’t just changes in the film industry that led to the closing of so many drive-ins. While things like the digitalization of film, the advancements by Blockbuster and Netflix did negatively affect the drive-in business, an even bigger difficulty was the real estate market.
“The way [real estate] factors with drive-ins is that initially built in massive amounts during the ‘40s and ‘50s, they were built outside of town,” Dorado said. “As cities grew, the city limits grew into where the drive-ins were, and that drove up real estate prices.”
The team wasn’t able to include this aspect in the documentary, as the film itself became focused on family, and the longest the film could be for The Big Tell was eight minutes, but Dorado was completely surprised at how much the real estate market affected the drive-in business.
Even though it was the main goal of the project, Dorado was surprised at how much people connect their families to the drive-in experience.
“Now they’re going with their own children and grandchildren, when they started going with their own grandparents, it’s gone over generations,” Dorado said.
For readers looking to start their own family tradition, or movie-goers who are thinking of trying out the drive-in experience, the Madera Drive-In will be open every weekend throughout its 2026 season.