December 13, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Jennifer Tiexiera and Gabriela Cavanagh
Some language in Spanish with subtitles
Culture Representation: Filmed in 2023 and 2024, the documentary film “Rebbeca” features a predominantly Latin group of people (with a few white people) discussing the life and career of Latin music singer Becky G.
Culture Clash: Becky G, whose real name is Rebbeca Gomez, tours in support her first regional Mexican music album (2023’s “Esquinas”), while experiencing challenges in her personal life, including her complicated feelings about her estranged father, who has addiction issues.
Culture Audience: “Rebbeca” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of Becky G and popular music stars from Generation Z.
Rebbeca is a somewhat bland but watchable documentary about singer Becky G. The movie’s tone tends be like a promotional video. The best parts of the film are when she gets candid and vulnerable about her troubled family history.
Directed by Jennifer Tiexiera and Gabriela Cavanagh, “Rebbeca” had its world premiere at the 2025 Tribeca Festival. The movie’s title refers to Becky G’s real name, which is Rebbeca Gomez. It’s not a comprehensive documentary but rather it’s more of a “year in the life” documentary that chronicles what Becky G’s life was like from 2023 to 2024, when this documentary was primarily filmed. Becky G is the movie’s narrator.
Becky G was born on March 2, 1997, in Inglewood, California, the working-class city where she was raised. She first became known to an international audiences in 2011, when at the age of 14, she began uploading YouTube videos of her singing cover songs. Some of the videos went viral. And within a year, she was signed to Sony Music’s RCA Records.
Her career as a major-label recording artist started in 2012, when she began releasing several singles as the lead artist. She has released music in English and in Spanish and is best known for her Spanish-language music. Her first breakout hit song was 2014’s “Shower.” She had even bigger hits with 2017’s “Mayores” (a duet with Bad Bunny) and 2018’s “Sin Pajama” (a duet with Natti Natasha), which both went multiplatinum in several countries.
Becky’s first studio album (“Mala Santa”) wasn’t released until 2019, but it was an immediate hit on the Latin music charts. Her subsequent albums so far (2022’s “Esquemas,” 2023’s “Esquinas” and 2024’s “Encuentros”) have had declining sales, but she is still a fairly big star in the music business. “Rebbeca” chronicles the making of “Esquinas” (her first album of regional Mexican music) and her first headlining tour: 2023’s “Mi Casa, Tu Casa,” a nearly sold-out U.S. trek that played in large theaters in September and October of that year.
“Rebbeca” begins with Becky G saying in a voiceover that someone once told her that she is “the biggest pop star you’ve never heard of.” Becky G says, “And I thought ‘Damn.’ Before I’m Becky G, I am Rebbeca.”
It sounds very scripted, but what she’s essentially saying is that in Spanish-speaking communities, Becky G is a famous name. In communities that don’t know or don’t care about Latin music artists, she’s still relatively unknown. She might never become a mainstream pop superstar, but she’s still Rebbeca Gomez before she’s Becky G.
Even so, this documentary shows that Becky G makes a considerable effort to become more mainstream to bigger audiences beyond her core fan base. Her first headlining tour is one major indication. Another indication is her recording collaborations with numerous artists who are bigger names in the music business, such as Bad Bunny, Maluma (on “La Respuesta”) and Karol G (on 2022’s “Mamii”).
She also recorded the song “The Fire Inside” (written by Diane Warren) for the 2023 movie “Flamin’ Hot,” a comedy/drama about the Flamin’ Hot Cheetos creator Richard Montañez. Warren is known for getting several Oscar nominations for songs that she’s written for movies. And when “The Fire Inside” was nominated for an Oscar, Becky G performed the song at the 2024 Academy Awards ceremony, as shown in the “Rebbeca” documentary.
Other songs performed by Becky G in the documentary include “Dolores,” “Cries in Spanish,” “Gomez x 4,” “Los Astros,” “Mala Santa,” “Mayores,” “Shower” and “Sin Pajama.” The performance footage is shows her charisma. However, it’s very debatable if Becky G is talented enough to become a superstar. She certainly has what it takes to have a successful career in the music business for many more years.
In the documentary, Becky G talks a lot about her dual heritage of being Mexican American by saying she has a “200%:” identity: “100% Mexican and 100% American.” She says it took a while to convince her business team that she should do a regional Mexican album. Becky G comments that she likes the raw storytelling of regional Mexican music. She cites Selena as her biggest musical influence. Other artists who’ve influenced her are Ana Gabriel and Jenni Rivera, according to what Becky G says in the documentary.
Even though the “Rebbeca” documentary shows members of Becky G’s entourage, the documentary is more about telling her story in the context of her family. She describes her mother Alejandra “Alex” Gomez this way: “She’s my best friend … If I could be half the woman my mom is, I’d be honored” And she marvels that at the age of 23, Alex was already a mother of four children. Becky G is the eldest of these four children.
Alex is featured prominently in the movie and says that she and Fransisco “Frank” Gomez Jr. (Becky G’s father) got married when Alex was 18, and Alex was the one who proposed marriage to Frank. (Alex and Frank are now divorced.) Although Becky G’s grandmothers Cruzita (nicknamed Ita) and Guadalupe (nicknamed Lita) are seen in the “Rebbeca” documentary, Becky G and her parents are the only people interviewed in the movie.
Long before Becky G found fame on YouTube, she began performing while still in elementary school. Becky G insists that she, not her parents, was the one pushing herself to go into showbiz, even if the odds were stacked against her. Her family didn’t have a lot of money and had no connections in the entertainment industry.
At one point in her childhood, Becky G and her family lived in a garage, where she gave some of her earliest live performances. Becky G says in the documentary that some of her best memories in life are when she and her family lived in this garage. It probably wasn’t fun for her parents, but children who grow up in near-poverty often have different memories that aren’t fully conscious of any financial struggles that their parents had to experience.
There were bigger problems in the family, which Frank confesses to when he says that his drug addiction was one of the main reasons for his failed marriage to Alex, who says she held on to the marriage for as long as she could. Frank says of his addictions: “It was cocaine and booze initially.” Later, during the COVID-19 pandemic, he says he became addicted to meth. “It was bad decision making,” Frank says. “Alex and the kids became collateral damage.”
Alex says that she could’ve handled Frank’s addiction issues, but the breaking point for her was Frank’s infidelities. Alex says during their 25-year marriage, she was addicted to Frank and had a hard time getting over him. Alex comments, “Becky took on the responsibility of being the provider for not only myself but for her siblings as well.” Usually, when a young person who’s a celebrity has this much responsibility to financially support several members of the family, it doesn’t end well.
There seems to be a certain amount of denial of about how this co-dependency isn’t healthy for a family. Can’t these family members who are old enough to work get their own jobs, instead of leeching off of Becky G by expecting her to financially support them? It’s probably why Becky G considers the time when her family was in near-poverty some of the happiest memories in her life, because she didn’t have the burden of being the family’s breadwinner. These issues aren’t addressed at all in the documentary, which is why the movie comes across as a bit of a puff piece.
One family member who isn’t benefiting from Becky G’s celebrity income is Frank. Becky G says in the documentary: “I’ve cut him off completely, except for him getting [addiction rehab] treatment.” Becky G says that her father was her first heartbreak.
There are also many things left unsaid that indicate Becky G has gone through a lot of emotional pain, despite the perky persona that she often has when she’s on camera. In one part of the documentary, she says she had a “mid-life crisis at 9 years old,” but she doesn’t elaborate. She also says she remembers feeling as a child that she was aware of mental-health issues that her parents had, but she felt helpless to do anything about it.
“Rebbeca” is also vague about the on-again/off-again relationship between Becky G and soccer player Sebastian Lletget. (He is not in the documentary.) The couple began dating in 2016 and got engaged to each other in 2022. Becky says that she and Lletget have similar backgrounds. Alex tearfully comments about the couple’s relationship: “I know they’re working through a lot, and it’s not easy in the public eye, but they’re both deserving of their own beautiful love story.”
In between these veiled references to trouble behind the scenes, the documentary shows performance clips and carefully curated footage of Becky G off stage, doing things like having friendly chats with her employees or greeting some of her fans. Even though Becky G is the narrator of the movie, her parents are the ones who give more insight into her life than she does. When Becky G is ready to do a more soul-baring documentary where she’s completely honest in showing what her life is really like behind the scenes, then people might think she’s more relatable.
In a documentary about a celebrity, people like to hear unique insights from the celebrity instead of the celebrity just giving the usual generic comments about being grateful for fans or the celebrity saying how much they love whatever current project that they’re trying to sell to the masses. Until then, Becky G comes across in “Rebbeca” as a typical social-media-conscious celebrity who wants to present an Instagram version of her life in a documentary—snapshots and glimpses that are attractive to look at but don’t offer a lot of depth beyond some musings that sound scripted.
Trafalgar Releasing released “Rebbeca” in U.S. cinemas for a limited engagement on December 10 and December 13, 2025. Netflix will premiere the movie on December 31, 2025.