In this affecting documentary portrait of a latter-day cowboy and lawman, the peace of two small cattle towns on opposite sides of the Texas–Mexico border is threatened by the shadow of Mexican drug cartels.
A stunning and subtle portrait of two towns that once lived in harmony while straddling the US–Mexico border.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2015
Western 2015
| Jul 22 | | ||
| Jul 23 | |
Q+A with Turner Ross at both screenings.
After the lyrical Tchoupitoulas, sibling filmmakers Turner Ross and Bill Ross IV turn their verite lens to a richly textured, elegiac portrait of cordial relations across the Tex–Mex border, painfully disrupted by the ‘war on drugs’ and its federally imposed border restrictions. We fall in with contemporary exemplars of two classic Western archetypes, a lawman and a cowboy. Chad Foster, the outgoing mayor of Eagle Pass in Maverick County, Texas, is equally at home in English and Spanish. Cattle broker Martin Wall’s century-old family ranching business depends on transactions across the Rio Grande. And his forthright six-year-old daughter will quickly correct any suspicion you might harbour that theirs is primarily a man’s world.
“The film reveals a border where Texans and Mexicans are united, rather than divided, by their languages and their enterprises…. Both mariachi tunes and Methodist hymns are heard, and fully felt, in Western, and the movie itself has the feel of a high lonesome country song crossed with a narcocorrido – a piercing ballad about hard work, the business of living, and how not to get caught in the crossfire.”
— Sheri Linden, Hollywood Reporter