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 Entertainment | March 2007 
Film Takes Gritty Look at US-Mexico Border
 Ed Stoddard - Reuters
| | Kelly, whose documentary debuted in December at the Santa Fe Film Festival, saw the local funeral home as a means to illustrate part of the unfolding human tragedy. |
In the gritty documentary, a medical technician delivers Mexican babies on the U.S. side of the border, joking that they have "won the lottery" because they get automatic American citizenship as a result.
A funeral director devotes much of his time to retrieving and cremating the bodies of Mexicans who die in the desert while trying to make the illegal crossing into America.
On the Mexican side, a young man looks into the camera and says he has little choice but to make the attempt to cross if he wants a better life and higher wages.
All of this is captured in "Borderlands," director Robert Kelly's film looking at life in two small towns separated by an international line in the sand: Columbus, New Mexico in the United States and Palomas, Mexico.
Kelly said he wanted to portray the human side of a complex issue.
"I would like to be able to show people that it is not black and white, that there is some ambiguity here, that these are real people and that simply putting up a wall isn't the answer," he told Reuters after a screening at the AFI Dallas International Film Festival, which runs until Sunday.
"If people can see the human reality, see the human stories, then I think their rhetoric might be a little softer on both sides of the issue."
More than half of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States are from Mexico.
Last year, the U.S. Congress passed and President George W. Bush signed legislation to build 700 miles of fence along the border. This month, lawmakers launched another push to overhaul U.S. immigration laws, introducing a bill to give millions of illegal immigrants a chance to become citizens.
Kelly, whose documentary debuted in December at the Santa Fe Film Festival, saw the local funeral home as a means to illustrate part of the unfolding human tragedy.
"I thought it would be a great way to see what really happens to these migrants, to talk to these people that actually have to go confront the fact that there is death in the desert," he said.
A poignant moment comes when the affable medical technician delivers a baby to a woman who has purposely crossed the border while in labor to give birth to a U.S. citizen.
Kelly's crew also spent time with a group of Minutemen, American civilian volunteers who assist the border patrol.
No attempt is made to demonize the |
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