Crossing Over (film)

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Movie
German title Crossing over
Original title Crossing over
Crossing Over (DVD poster) .png
Country of production United States
original language English , Spanish
Publishing year 2009
length 113 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Wayne Kramer
script Wayne Kramer
production Wayne Kramer,
Frank Marshall
music Mark Isham
camera James Whitaker
cut Arthur Coburn
occupation

Crossing Over is a feature film by Wayne Kramer from the year 2009 . The work is about individuals and families who are legally or illegally residing in the United States . Harrison Ford plays a leading role in the film as Max Brogan, who works for the immigration service and tries again and again to help the immigrants. The different storylines of the people and their fates gradually come together like episodes.

Wayne Kramer, himself an immigrant from South Africa , remade his 1995 short film of the same name and is both a producer, director and screenwriter. The film was shot in Los Angeles in 2007 . The film premiered in the United States on February 27, 2009. The German theatrical release was on June 25, 2009.

action

Every day immigrants from all over the world try to find a new home in Los Angeles. But foreigners who apply for a residence permit in the USA often have great difficulties with the bureaucracy. Max Brogan is a field officer for the Immigration Service. He and his colleagues regularly raid factories to capture migrants who have immigrated to the United States illegally. During one of these raids he meets Mireya Sanchez, who begs him not to arrest her. Despite a bad conscience, he still has to arrest her under pressure from a colleague. Mireya gives him a slip of paper that says where her son lives.

Brogan is plagued by his conscience. He picks up the son and brings him to Mireya's parents in Mexico. There he learns that Mireya was expelled, but was not back with her parents. She wants to return to the USA to bring her son back. Brogan tries everything to find Mireya in the USA, but to no avail.

Cole Frankel is a civil servant at the Immigration Service. His wife Denise is a lawyer specializing in immigration law and responsible for issuing green cards. Cole tends to abuse his position for private purposes. In front of the immigration office building, he is involved in a car accident with Claire Shepard, who is aiming for a film career in Hollywood. She tells him about her problems with the green card , residence permit and work permit. Frankel offers to approve her application for a green card if she is sexually pleasing to him in return. Claire agrees. When Frankel announced after a while that he would leave his wife and dare to start over with her, Claire gave him to understand her dislike for him. Frankel then promises her that she will never see him again and that she will get her green card in the mail.

Claire's friend Gavin Kossef also wants to build an existence in the USA. He is a musician and comes from a Jewish family, but describes himself as an atheist. Through contacts, he was given the opportunity to apply for a job at a Jewish school, which would secure a right of residence in the USA. Although he does not speak Hebrew , he passes the exam with the help of a rabbi who is present . When Gavin sees through the way Claire is trying to get her green card, the relationship seems to have ended and the two do not see each other again.

The Muslim pupil Taslima Jahangir gives a lecture in her class about the assassins of September 11th and shows a certain understanding for the perpetrators. Her classmates are outraged and mock them. A short time later, FBI and immigration officials are at her door. She is suspected of having terrorist intentions. As they and their parents, unlike their two younger siblings, are not US citizens, they are about to be deported. Taslima's parents negotiate with the help of the lawyer Denise that her father can stay with her siblings, but that Taslima and her mother have to leave the country. She and her mother leave the USA from Los Angeles Airport in tears.

Yong Kim from South Korea immigrated to the United States with his parents, brother and sister and is about to be officially naturalized a few days. He abides by the law until he gets caught up in a Korean youth group that forces him to join a robbery. The gang raided a liquor store in Koreatown , where Hamid Baraheri happened to be shopping. Hamid is a son of Iranian immigrants and Max Brogan's partner in the immigration police. His father is about to be officially naturalized. When a gang member shoots the owner, Hamid takes up a gun. He shoots all gang members except Yong. When he realizes that Yong was talked into the attack and did not want to hurt anyone, he allows him to escape and covers him.

Hamid Baraheri's sister and her boyfriend had been murdered days earlier, which is very stressful for him. The sister's friend ran a copy shop and also traded in fake residence papers, which is why he was visited by Claire. When he tells Max Brogan about it, Max immediately starts an investigation to help his partner and friend. It turns out that Hamid Baraheri's brother is the perpetrator. He couldn't stand his sister having an affair with a married Latino . Hamid Baraheri's brother is arrested and taken away during his father's naturalization ceremony.

Frankel's machinations are exposed, Frankel is arrested and Claire Shepard is expelled to her native Australia . Mireya Sanchez was killed trying to illegally cross the border into the United States. Max Brogan brings the sad news to her parents personally.

Reviews

  • "Some storylines - especially that of Ford - are gripping and exciting, but are undermined by the silly compulsion that the stories always have to cross and influence each other at some point." ( Der Spiegel )
  • “Wayne Kramer only touches on a lot. But these small splinters, skillfully reduced to the essentials, which reflect individual facets and weak points of the system, have an enormous effect. The connections between the individual stories are a matter of course, and each viewer can fill the gaps himself. In addition, Kramer lets each of his characters come into their own. He does not judge, but he also does not deny the guilt that everyone in this broken world bears on himself. "( Welt Online )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Approval certificate for crossing over . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , June 2009 (PDF; test number: 118 202 K).
  2. ↑ Crossing Over. In: Zelluloid.de. Archived from the original on July 8, 2017 ; accessed on August 19, 2018 .
  3. ^ Daniel Sander: Immigrants for walking out of the cinema. In: Der Spiegel . June 25, 2009. Retrieved June 30, 2009 .
  4. ↑ Sascha Westphal: When the American Dream becomes a nightmare. In: Welt Online . June 28, 2009. Retrieved June 30, 2009 .