Border Stories (2009)

Border Stories weaves a path along the U.S.-Mexico border, exploring the complex relationship between the subject and object, the United States and Mexico, and the developed and the developing world. The boundary stretches for nearly 2000 miles between where the Rio Grande empties into the Gulf of Mexico and the beach north of Tijuana, where the iron bars of the border fence end in the waves of the Pacific. A Guatemalan migrant waits to cross the border after riding freight trains through Mexico, a school teacher walks 115 miles to protest the planned border fence, a Mexican journalist ponders a death threat from a drug cartel, vigilantes patrol the border themselves, a rancher owns land along five miles of border and wishes the thousands passing through would just shut her gates. The border is a mosaic of stories, and this film is an opportunity to listen to some of them.