Border-Town Life Defies the Wall in “Borderlands”
A short documentary shows how commuters, city planners, and kids deal with the wall that divides their cities.
“Isn’t it so fascinating that the simple act of drawing a line on a map can transform the way we see and experience the world?” Ronald Rael observes in the opening of the documentary film “Borderlands,” which looks at communities in San Diego and Tijuana, Brownsville and Matamoros, and El Paso and Juárez. Rael, an architect, explores the area near the border fence outside El Paso with an eye tuned to reimagining the space around him and plotting ways to transgress it. He is accompanied by his nine-year-old son, Mattias, and he teaches the boy how to interpret a wall that has come to dominate the political conversation in the United States.