Director: Chantal Akerman

2002

“Sometimes the absence is stronger than the presence”

 

 

 

One of the striking features of Chantal Akerman’s documentary, ‘From the Other Side,’ is that so often the faces of Mexicans captured in the film are blurry, as if to underscore their anonymity and invisibility in terms of the long history of U.S.-Mexico border-crossing discourse. The individuals may change but the phenomena of poverty and desperation that drives migrants from their homes does not. Made in 2002, its motifs are hauntingly familiar in 2016 as the story of illegal migrants has moved centerstage, with news, surveillance footage, border films, and television drama all reinforcing the image of the migrant as ghostly, suspect, or tragic figure. What distinguishes Akerman’s film is not only its timing (made one year after the terrorist attacks of “9/11,” it anticipates the fear of borders that marks our contemporary moment), but its ability to make us reflect. Through long takes and a quiet tone, we are invited to see and hear the other side and simply to experience what life along the border is like for all concerned.