Bordertown (2006)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
German title Bordertown
Original title Bordertown
Country of production USA , UK
original language English
Publishing year 2006
length 112 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
JMK 14
Rod
Director Gregory Nava
script Gregory Nava
production David Bergstein ,
Simon Fields ,
Gregory Nava
music Graeme Revell
camera Reynaldo Villalobos
cut Padraic McKinley
occupation

Bordertown is a US-American - British thriller by Gregory Nava from the year 2006 .

action

Lauren Adrian works as a reporter for the Chicago Sentinel newspaper . She is sent to northern Mexico to research a series of murders in the border town of Ciudad Juárez . Due to the North American Free Trade Area ( NAFTA ), many factories - so-called maquiladoras - have settled in these Bordertowns , which manufacture cheap mass-produced goods for the US market and preferably employ young women of Indian descent for this purpose, as they work under harsh conditions and for starvation wages. While 375 of these women were officially brutally raped and killed, the population speaks of a number above 5000. Neither the state nor the companies ensure the safety of the workers; Nor are they interested in solving the murders, since on the one hand the NAFTA agreement should not appear in a bad light and on the other hand the companies want maximum profit.

Arriving in Juárez, Lauren contacts her old friend and colleague Alfonso Diaz, whom she has not seen for years. After spending time together in El Paso , he now runs a newspaper in Juárez that frequently publishes stories that local business leaders and the authorities bribed by them are a thorn in the side. Diaz doesn't want to help Lauren at first, but when a girl who survived the rape shows up and Lauren takes care of her, Diaz helps her too.

Eva - that's the name of the 16-year-old girl - was on the way home on the factory bus and was the last passenger when the bus driver asked if he could still go to refuel. Instead of going to the gas station, however, he drove her into the desert, where a second man was waiting to rape her with the help of the bus driver. Assuming she was dead, the perpetrators then buried Eva, but she later awoke from her unconsciousness.

While Eva and her mother are in the editorial offices, the police, who are after Eva, are searching them. After Lauren successfully hid them from the police, she takes Eva to her hotel. While Lauren is on the phone with her supervisor, Eva's tormentor enters the apartment, although it is not entirely clear whether Eva is not just imagining it. After Eva's escape, Lauren Adrian is able to find her again soon, but when they return to the hotel, the two discover that the police are already waiting for them there. Lauren then brings Eva to Teresa, a wealthy local who campaigns for the factory workers.

The following day, Lauren and Diaz take photos of all eligible bus drivers. However, they are noticed and barely escape a car chasing them in an empty factory hall. After this incident, Lauren cannot go back to the hotel, which is why she is supposed to stay with Teresa. Since she is invited to a party that evening by the influential local industrialist family Salamanca, she takes Lauren and Eva there with her. The latter recognizes the man who raped her among the guests. From a distance they both look into each other's eyes, Eva collapses and Lauren takes her away from the party.

Eva was able to identify the bus driver on a photo the next day. Teresa brings the theory into play that Eva only imagined the second perpetrator; also because she repeatedly calls him the devil. Since the police are obviously not interested in clearing up the case, Lauren wants to smuggle undercover as a factory worker on her own and lure the perpetrators into a trap. Alfonso Diaz is supposed to inform the police, but only when Lauren is already on the bus heading for the desert. The two assume that the police - even if they have been bribed by the enemy - will help her because they cannot afford a dead American journalist.

Eva helps Lauren Adrian dress up as a factory worker so she can work for a shift in Eva's maquiladora. Before she gets on the bus, at the wheel of which the bus driver Eva recognized is sitting, she quickly packs a couple of stones into her bag. When she is the last passenger on the bus, the driver asks again whether he can go to refuel. Meanwhile, the police are waiting with Diaz in the desert at the point where Eva was raped. However, the bus driver takes Lauren to a junkyard, where she can knock him out with her stone-laden bag and lock him in his bus. While escaping from the second perpetrator, Lauren comes across a mass grave with dead girls. She then meets with Diaz, who, however, doubts the presence of a second man, while Lauren is certain of his existence.

After Lauren has finally finished her article, which her boss is enthusiastic about, she meets up with Marco Salamanca, whom she knows from the party given by his parents, and asks him about two guests at that party. She learns that a certain Senator Rawlings enforced the NAFTA agreement, and the name of the man Eva recognized as her rapist and whose long-established family is also involved in factories.

The next day she secretly received the information that her article was not printed because some politicians had applied pressure. Among them is Rawlings, who in those days advocated an extension of the free trade agreement to Central America and wants to avoid the negative publicity for NAFTA and the states and companies affected by the explosive story. Lauren therefore wants to go back to Chicago immediately, which causes Eva great fear because she has to testify against the bus driver in three days. That night, Eva sees her rapist in the garden of Teresa's house. She alerts Teresa, but her employees cannot find the man.

In Chicago, Lauren meets a manager of the Chicago Sentinel , the head of the newspaper publisher and Senator Rawlings, who shortly afterwards leave the office closed. Her boss tries to justify the rejection of the article with corporate responsibility and to calm her down by promoting her to foreign correspondent. Lauren accuses him of spinelessness and reflects on her origins, which she has previously denied: Her parents were poor migrant workers from Mexico and were murdered before their eyes.

To support Eva in her testimony, she flies back to Juárez, where upon arrival she learns that Diaz has been murdered by strangers and that the bus driver will be released because Eva has disappeared. Meanwhile, out of fear of her captors, she wants to be smuggled across the border into the USA together with other Mexicans in the trunk of a car. The smugglers are discovered by a patrol helicopter, leave the car with the trapped refugees and flee on foot. The refugees are released from the US border guards and sent back to Juárez.

Lauren now assumes that Marco Salamanca also knows about all the machinations and confronts him in a factory that he runs. He tells her that Diaz died because his reports displeased those in influence in the region, that he never told the police about the murders of women because they knew about them anyway, and that the arrest of Eva's rapist would not stop the murders.

In search of Eva, Lauren drives to the slums where she lived. While there, caused by a tapped power line and the lack of a fire brigade, an entire hut district is soon in flames, Lauren is surprised and overwhelmed by the second murderer in Eva's family's hut, but Eva, who has just come home, rushes to help her. She knocks the man down, who then dies in the fire.

The film ends with Eva making her testimony against the bus driver, now with her mother being protected by a human rights organization, NAFTA being expanded to Central America, factory workers continuing to be murdered and Lauren taking over Adrian Diaz's newspaper in order to eventually bring the truth to light .

Reviews

  • Chris Summers wrote on BBC News on September 10, 2006 that the film was a copy of The Virgin of Juarez starring Minnie Driver, which was produced for less than £ 1 million .
  • The fact-based thriller aims to criticize globalized capitalism and raise awareness of the lot of women in this region, but undermines its good intentions with many discrepancies and massive clichés. No more than a star-studded telenovela. "( Film service )

Awards

Gregory Nava was nominated for the Golden Bear in 2007.

background

The film was shot in Mexico and New Mexico . The BBC estimated the cost of production at around £ 25 million . The world premiere took place on May 18, 2006 at the Cannes Film Market . The film had its German premiere on February 15, 2007 at the Berlin International Film Festival 2007 .

The thriller focuses on a series of murders that has been taking place in Ciudad Juárez since the early 1990s. According to Amnesty International (March 2007 article), between 1993 and the end of 2006, more than 400 women and girls were murdered and over 400 women are missing, but according to other information there are more than 600. In 2006 the number of rapes and murders fell slightly for the first time.

See also: Femicide in Ciudad Juárez

Individual evidence

  1. Age rating for Bordertown . Youth Media Commission .
  2. news.bbc.co.uk
  3. Jennifer Lopez at the Berlinale When pop stars hit the big screen - film review by Verena Lueken
  4. Filming locations for Bordertown
  5. news.bbc.co.uk
  6. ^ Start dates for Bordertown
  7. Amnesty International - WOMEN MURDERERS IN CIUDAD JUÁREZ ( Memento of the original of February 8, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.amnesty.de

Web links