Mexico's Oscar Entry 'Desierto' Taps Into US Election's Heated Immigration Debate Reuters
go to original October 13, 2016

A new trailer for Jonás Cuarón's border thriller Desierto uses Donald Trump's infamous speech about Mexicans being criminals and rapists to terrifying effect. (Cinépolis Distribución)

A Mexican director's intense thriller of immigrants pursued by a xenophobic gunman as they try to cross the border into the United States is opening just as the subject of immigration plays a leading role in the US presidential election.

Desierto, written and directed by Jonas Cuaron and out in US theaters on Friday, follows the high-stakes journey that a group of Mexicans embark on to cross the border into the United States illegally. Some are hoping to start a new life while others, such as Gael Garcia Bernal's Moises, are hoping to reunite with family. As they traverse the stark and unbearably hot desert wasteland dividing the two countries, a ruthless American vigilante, played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, whittles down the group with the help of a long-range rifle and a ferocious dog.

"I wanted to tell a story that I felt very close to myself, which is the story both about migration, but also a parable of where we're going to arrive as a society if we keep promoting so much hatred towards migrants, towards foreigners," Cuaron told Reuters. Desierto is Mexico's official Oscar entry this year. Cuaron, the son of Oscar-winning Gravity filmmaker Alfonso Cuaron, said it was "wonderful that this film could be part of the discussion in the United States at that level."

...Morgan, whose vigilante character in the film is motivated to kill by his unabashed hatred towards immigrants, said "everything that Trump said in his speech about immigration was dead wrong."

Read the rest at DNA

Related: ‘Desierto’: Action Thriller or Political Parable for Our Troubled Times? (The Washington Post)

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