Celebrate 4/20 With These 10 Weed Themed Films & TV Shows

Cheech and Chong’s very first movie finds them playing — what else? — two stoner friends who unknowingly smuggle a van made entirely out of marijuana from Mexico to Los Angeles. What follows is mayhem. It includes nuns, a bunch of puns, some questionable fashion choices, Tom Skerritt playing a Vietnam War vet named Strawberry and an overly zealous sergeant on their hunt played by Stacy Keach. A stoner classic it would be the first of many Cheech and Chong collaborations over the years.

The premise of this early Dave Chappelle film is simple enough: three friends sell weed to bail out another friend after he is imprisoned for killing a police horse with junk food. This is your gateway film to all pot films. It’s just good entertainment. It’s also incredibly diverse. Chapelle stars alongside Guillermo Diaz and Jim Breuer, while Tommy Chong himself makes an appearance. It’s also that rare stoner film directed by a woman, Tamra Davis. Tie-dye, happy faces and eyes in need of Visine drops will turn your frown upside down. Guaranteed.

What originated as a hidden camera bit in Uruguay turned into a full-blown feature mockumentary about a fake Uruguayan Chamber of Legal Marijuana that travels to the United States to find 50 tons of cannabis to supply the country. Set mostly in the U.S. and treading a fine line between what’s real and what’s fiction, this Borat-esque film actually stars Uruguay’s very real president at the time Jose Mujica.

When their high strung mother goes out for the day leaving Flama and his buddy Moko with some pesos for pizza and Cokes in their high-rise housing complex it has all the makings of the perfect Sunday for a couple of tweens. Settling down in front of the Xbox with sodas and a big bowl of chips the day could not be more perfect that is until the electricity goes out. By the time their next door neighbor Rita comes over to bake a cake (and accidentally makes it with marijuana) this Mexican coming of age tale shows itself to be a tender and quirky take on the genre.

Josué is a young and successful businessman, son of a conservative — read classist — mother. Kenny is Josué’s cousin, a teenager who seems to be going through a rebellious phase that mainly consists of smoking a ton of weed. When Josué is appointed by the family as Kenny’s guide, responsible for steering him off the evil path of ganja, the situation becomes tricky, because secretly Josué also happens to be a big fan of the green stuff. With a simple, handheld camera and unpretentious cinematography, Kenke tells a story about first love, family dynamics, and a hypocritical society that suffers from double moral standards and other vices.

Set in Colombia in the 1970s, right when the demand for marijuana is set to explode, Ciro Guerra’s follow-up to his Oscar-nominated Embrace of the Serpent ditches the black and white aesthetic of his previous film for the colorful world of the Guajira desert. Yet again, though, he’s set his sights (alongside co-director and producer Cristina Gallego) on a story about the way Colombian history intersects with its indigenous population. Birds of Passage follows an Wayuu indigenous family who takes a leading role in the budding new drug trade, and discovers the perks of wealth and power, but with a violent and tragic downside.