As the November presidential election approaches, the border crisis narrative has taken center stage in U.S. politics. In response, a group of fronterizo filmmakers are confidently challenging the alarmist narratives through innovative and artistic cinematic representations.
Many are Mexican American women from Texas who have premiered films in the past year. Their work contrasts with the sensationalist headlines of border chaos and disruption, offering nuanced and sensitive portraits of the region’s people, their resilience, and the complexities of the bicultural and binational communities along the Rio Grande (or Río Bravo, as it’s known south of the border).
These filmmakers include Silvia Del Carmen Castaños and Estefanía “Beba” Contreras (Hummingbirds), Alejandra Vasquez and Sam Osborn (Going Varsity in Mariachi), Iliana Sosa (God Save Texas: La Frontera), and Robie and Alejandro Flores (The In Between).
These works all follow in the footsteps of the groundbreaking film Las Marthas (2014), directed by El Paso native Cristina Ibarra. Her documentary pioneered a fresh perspective on the border’s interconnectedness, portraying an annual debutante ball in Laredo dedicated to Martha Washington. An overlooked masterpiece of U.S. independent cinema, Las Marthas follows two Mexican American girls as they bear the weight of this opulent tradition at a time of economic uncertainty and tension over immigration policies.
Almost a decade later, directors Castaños and Contreras—the former born in Laredo, the latter in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico—premiered their playful and personal documentary Hummingbirds at the Berlinale last year, winning the Grand Prix in the Generation 14plus competition. This irreverent and upbeat buddy movie follows a pair of slackers who venture out at night to escape the harsh summer heat.
The filmmakers turn the cameras on themselves as they roam the deserted streets of Laredo in pursuit of inspiration, excitement, and a feeling of belonging. As pressures jeopardize their shared aspirations, they unite to defend their dreams, cherishing the present moment and their bond with each other. Touching on a diversity of topics, including queerness, reproductive rights, and immigration, Hummingbirds mischievously challenges the status quo in a politically divided country.
Described as a “Hoop Dreams with music,” Vasquez and Osborn’s feature Going Varsity in Mariachi had its world premiere at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award.
The film tells the underdog story of the Edinburg North High School’s Mariachi Oro, a music group based in the South Texas borderlands, whose young musicians prepare to compete for the state championship against their rivals at Texas’s main high school mariachi competition. By documenting their journey through the competition calendar, Going Varsity in Mariachi deftly explores themes of cultural identity, class struggle, and social issues.
Iliana Sosa, who won the Louis Black Lone Star Award and the Fandor New Voices Award at the 2022 SXSW Film Festival for her poetic debut feature, What We Leave Behind, recently premiered the documentary feature La Frontera at Sundance. La Frontera is part of the HBO documentary series God Save Texas, inspired by the book of the same name by Lawrence Wright (Richard Linklater and Alex Stapleton directed the other two parts). God Save Texas: La Frontera is available to stream on Max.
Sosa’s first-person documentary expands on her debut feature, which followed her aging Mexican grandfather, who, after a lifetime of crossing the border, made a final trip back to rural Mexico. In La Frontera, Sosa captivatingly explores her relationship with her fronterizo upbringing and recounts the challenges that her hometown of El Paso faces amid the current political climate.
Next up is the lyrical and deeply personal documentary The In Between, by the Flores siblings, Robie and Alejandro, which made its world premiere in the documentary competition at the 2024 SXSW Film Festival in Austin. After the death of her brother, Robie returns to her hometown of Eagle Pass to reconnect with her childhood memories. Along the way, she confronts her grief and embraces her cultural upbringing, navigating the complexities of in-betweenness.
The first feature film from director Robie Flores and her brother Alejandro offers a subtle and unexpected depiction of the U.S.-Mexico border, presenting a humanizing viewpoint that depicts the vitality of a flourishing bicultural and binational community.
The film will screen at the Bentonville Film Festival on June 13. And at CineFestival in San Antonio, which begins on July 11. The two are also planning a Texas-Mexico border tour this fall. Dates have yet to be announced.
Another earlier film in this cohort of films is the 2021 documentary Dirty Feathers, the remarkable debut feature by Mexican-born Carlos Alfonso Corral, produced by renowned Italian filmmaker Roberto Minervini, which was selected for the Panorama section at the Berlinale.
Shot on the streets of El Paso and Ciudad Juárez in stark black and white, the vérité film sensitively portrays a homeless community on both sides of the border, including a recently married couple, a grieving father, a veteran, and a 16-year-old girl, all of them living on the edge.
Central to all these cinematic works is the concept of “Nepantla,” a border studies theory developed by queer Chicana scholar Gloria Anzaldúa, who was born in Harlingen, Texas. She repurposed a Mexican Indigenous term, which originally described the space between two bodies of water, to articulate a complex notion applicable to border studies—the idea of in-betweenness, a space where one is not simply one thing or another, but in a state of constant flux. Sosa explores these concepts in her latest film, and it is no coincidence that the Flores siblings have embraced the concept of in-betweenness as the title of their debut feature.
Regrettably, ineffective federal policies are unfairly blaming border communities for the diverse array of issues facing the U.S. But these fronterizo filmmakers are providing a compelling counterbalance to these toxic narratives by highlighting the complexities and virtues of life in the borderlands.
Through their sensitive and insider perspectives, these filmmakers capture the essence of life on the border, inviting audiences to enter the stories and experiences of those residing in this dynamic region. With their poignant portrayals of struggle, resilience, and hope, these films testify to the power of storytelling in bridging divides and nurturing understanding in our increasingly intricate world.
Carlos A. Gutiérrez is the cofounding executive director of Cinema Tropical and co-programmer of Cinema Tucsón.
Additional Reading:
The Border Chronicle Q&A with Robie and Alex Flores on their hometown Eagle Pass, Texas, and the making of The In Between.
From El Paso, Texas, the film collective Femme Frontera champions the work of Latine female and nonbinary filmmakers.
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