De l’autre côté (From the Other Side). 2002. Written and directed by Chantal Akerman

De l’autre côté (From the Other Side). 2002. Belgium. Written and directed by Chantal Akerman. DCP. In Spanish; English subtitles. 99 min. From the Other Side, the third documentary, together with D’Est and Sud, in Chantal Akerman’s loose trilogy about history, landscape, and trauma, was provoked by an article in which she “had read a few lines, not about the border but about the ranchers who hunted ‘illegals,’ as they say, with Magnums…. [T]hey said: ‘They bring dirt,’ and when I read the word ‘dirt,’ I thought, ‘dirt, dirty, dirty Jews’.... On the ground, the project took shape, became more precise.” In 2002, in the months between 9/11 and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, Akerman, assisted by Robert Fenz, observed conditions on both sides of the Mexican–American border. Against a Sonoran Desert landscape of dust, corrugated tin, and big sky, Mexicans speak directly into the camera as they describe family separations and violence in their quest for a better life in “El Norte,” while American landowners assert their right to shoot trespassers and a sheriff eulogizes a fellow officer who has died on “the front lines of this daily war.”