The Nogales International Film Festival is going on right now, and each night events will culminate in a film screening that is truly cross-border.
For their “Film on the Fence” initiative, organizers are putting the film screens on the border wall itself and gathering audiences on both sides to watch the same film, at the same time.
It’s a moment of shared experience in a place marked by division.
Film on the Fence brings movie lovers together across the border wall
On Thursday night, the rust-colored steel bollard wall between the United States and Mexico became the backdrop for cinema.
On back-to-back screens on either side of the border wall in Nogales, movie-goers in Mexico and in Arizona experienced the music and story of the legendary Tejano star Selena, together. The documentary screened simultaneously for audiences in Nogales, Sonora, and Nogales, Arizona, who could faintly see each other across the border wall in the glow of the movie screen.
Isabel Castro, creator of the documentary “Selena y Los Dinos,” spoke to both audiences in a Q&A that was streamed to both sides of the wall — just like her film.
“I mean this has been such an unbelievably moving experience,” Castro said. “It symbolizes the importance of art to be able to kind of show that we are more similar than we are different.”
As part of the festival, feature-length and short films are playing on the border wall in Ambos Nogales through Saturday.
'We’re all one Nogales'
Francisco Landin says Nogales is the only place this festival could be done.
Landin is managing director of the Nogales International Film Festival, and he says, they’re showing a different feature film on the fence each night, including the new Netflix documentary "Selena y los Dinos," the episode of "Leguizamo Does America" where he goes to Phoenix, a few local short films and more.
The festival itself will be showing more than 100 films throughout this weekend, in fact.
Full conversation with Francisco Landin
FRANCISCO LANDIN: It’s very impactful to go to a city like Nogales. Nogales is one of the only cities in the world that is cut in half by a big border wall. It’s not a geographical divide like a river. It’s not one city on one side, one city on the other side. It is one city, it’s Nogales — and there’s a big border that cuts right in the middle of it.
So you can see that happen with people’s everyday lives. If you go on on a Sunday, for example, you can see people having lunch with their family on the other side of the wall. You can see people taking pictures sometimes. I’ve seen pictures where high school graduates go and they’re, you know, a family members are on the other side of the wall and they take a picture with that person on the other side of the wall because they they can’t cross.
So, it is very much one city divided by this wall. So when you think about where does this festival fit the most perfectly, it is Nogales. You know, if if we go to El Paso and then do it in Juarez, it’s different. They’re two different cities.
Most of Texas has a river that’s dividing it. So, they’re, "ambos Nogales" is what they call, or both Nogales. … So it makes perfect sense for the film event to also be like that, to also be two communities watching, having one event, watching one film to make sure that they stay united, this this despite this, you know, very clear physical divide between them.
LAUREN GILGER: So, talk about doing a film screening, which you did for the first time last year, and you’re doing again this year at the festival where you have a screen on the border wall and audiences on both sides basically, right? Like this is pretty stark in its imagery.
FRANCISCO LANDIN: Right. It is, and you know, I use the word impactful a lot because it really is. So, what we do for the Film on the Fence event, we set two screens back to back against the border wall and we play the same film to both sides, so we you get to experience the community feeling of it with just the power of film and the power of having an an outdoor event.
Seeing the wall as it is, if you’ve never seen the wall, it’s a very very giant concept to think about. Yeah. And seeing a screen reflected on somebody’s face across the border wall, watching the same thing that you’re watching at the same exact time, it has kind of an opposite effect, it has a very unifying effect and that’s why ambos Nogales is so important, because we’re all one Nogales, you know, we’re all one one people, so it’s a it’s a great way to kind of remind you of that despite, you know, all this barbed wire and these giant metal walls sticking out of the ground.
LAUREN GILGER: Right, and and so folks can understand this like if you’ve never seen the border wall, it is sort of these long metal bollards, 30 feet high, right? And so there are spaces in between them, small ones, but there are spaces so if you have a screen like you do here on on both sides playing the same film at the same time, you can you can see the people on the other side.
FRANCISCO LANDIN: Right. Yeah, you can see through it, it’s like a big grid like metal grid, so you can see people on the other side for sure, yeah, and you hear the the sound, you know, the film sound echoing off of the buildings on the other side.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, I’m sure people laugh at the same time, cry at the same time, all those things, right?
FRANCISCO LANDIN: Right, yeah exactly, we’re all experiencing the same event despite this this big wall that’s that’s just between us.
LAUREN GILGER: What was it like doing this for the first time last year, Francisco? Like, what — do you remember a moment that, you know, made you really stop and say, "Wow"?
FRANCISCO LANDIN: Yeah, you know, it’s when the film starts, I think that’s the that’s the best moment. You know, before that, people start showing up, and we have some announcements and everything is great, and then the film starts.
And you see the sign come up, and you know, the sun is going down, and you get the feeling like, all right, the the event is happening now. What we’re here for is happening now, and it’s just to enjoy the beautiful Nogales night, have a nice evening together. And that’s you know, kind of the key word is together, we’re doing all this all this together.
And I think that’s that is the moment that I like the most. That’s the moment where I get to stop and take a breath ... and you know, take it in, and not worry anymore about logistics or you know, things that are happening, this — now I can watch a nice movie, and do it with the people that are on the other side of the wall.
LAUREN GILGER: You’re talking about this festival as growing into sort of a landmark event for Mexican-American film, for Latino film and borderland cinema. Do you think that that borderland cinema has become a genre in its own right?
FRANCISCO LANDIN: Yeah, you know, and there very much is a genre for borderland cinema. And a lot of people don’t see it because, you know, it’s not movies that are coming out necessarily, you know, it’s not every year that we get a movie like "Sicario" or like "Traffic."
But there are a lot of films — and one of the most interesting things to me, I think, is for the European market — of I can get a little industry. For the European market, border films are huge. I think it’s so much of a good guys against bad guys aesthetics for them that it is actually a huge market.
So, here in Arizona, we are building a corridor into Sonora for specifically for filmmaking and specifically for borderland filmmaking. ... So, we are connecting on both sides to be sure that when when films come in and they want to shoot in Mexico and in the U.S., that it can be easier for them to do that because it is a genre on its own. I do think it’s something that people like to see, it’s very captivating to see border stories.
LAUREN GILGER: So, what are your hopes for this year as you do this event again and continue to grow it?
FRANCISCO LANDIN: Really, we truly hope that people will come out and have a good time. You know, that’s why we do it, that’s why like I said, everything is free. That’s why we bring filmmakers, we budget for their flights, we budget for their rooms, because we want filmmakers to come from New York, from Miami, from LA, from Mexico City, who have never been to the border.
We want them to experience the border and then we want them to tell people, "You know where we should shoot a film? In southern Arizona, in northern Mexico, by the border. It is beautiful there, the people are amazing."
And we should keep coming back, and that that’s what we want really for the for the cities of Nogales, we want it to be looked at more as an art, film, and culture hub than as a border town.
LAUREN GILGER: All right. Francisco Landin, managing director of the Nogales International Film Festival joining us. Francisco, thank you so much for coming on the show, I really appreciate you taking the time.
FRANCISCO LANDIN: Thank you so much for having me.
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