JUSTICE MATTERS

BORDERLAND | The Line Within

PAMELA YATES
USA, 2024
110 minutes, Color
Official website

In Person: Director Pamela Yates and Producer Paco de Onís. 4/25 Q&A moderated by author Ken Grossinger (Art Works: How Organizers and Artists are Creating a Better World Together - www.artworksbook.com). 4/27 Q&A moderated by Maria McFarland Sánchez-Moreno, CEO, RepresentUs, former Senior Legal Advisor for Human Rights Watch

There is no actual line at the border, as most of us realize. But in Pamela Yates's new documentary we see there is no border because ICE is everywhere: the border lives within each individual who is subject to its control. Yates follows two journeys to this border: that of Guatemalan human rights worker Kaxh, who escapes local assassins only to become incarcerated in the United States.; and Gabriela, a Texas mother whose DACA status is revoked due to her activism on behalf of migrants. Yates also introduces us to a new breed of scholar-activists called digital humanists, whose work documents the carceral web that is the "border-industrial complex." Yates's previous trilogy on indigenous people's environmental resistance in Guatemala won awards at past Filmfest DCs. Once again, she spurs, shocks, and educates us into caring about a struggle for justice, this one closer to home.—Judy Bloch

In English and Spanish with English subtitles