I’m going to warn you right now. If you’re Stephen Miller or someone who agrees with that kind of hardline, nativist bullshit, you’re going to hate this piece and all the movies on my list, as they’re all empathetic to the immigrants they portray.
Like the best war movies tend to be anti-war movies, the best immigration movies are usually critical of the treatment of those people that are desperate to better their situation. Always remember that when powerful people are trying to convince you that powerless people are the threat, they’re lying to you.
There’s going to be someone out there saying to themselves, “Aren’t all movies about unauthorized immigrants crime films, because it’s illegal immigration?”
Personally, I just can’t see crossing a border or overstaying a visa as that severe a crime, so I focused on stories about exploitation, kidnapping, the black market organ trade, and murder. I didn’t include films where the act of crossing the border was the only illegal act. Movies like A BETTER LIFE, THE VISITOR, EL NORTE, and YELLOW ROSE are all great movies worth seeing, but straight dramas.
It’s always interesting to look at who are the heroes and the villains in any movie. It often shines a light on how we see people, both individually and as a group. How, even when the film itself shows the immigrants’ journeys in a compassionate light, it can get dangerously close to treating them as a monolithic other worthy of pity. While these films have their flaws, their strengths more than outweigh their weaknesses.
BORDER INCIDENT (1949 – Anthony Mann)
One of the earliest efforts on the subject. In the first few entries on this chronological list, the tendency was to focus on the Border Patrol. Essentially using the genre elements of a cop story. In this underrated Anthony Mann film, a Mexican federal officer (played by Ricardo Montalban) goes undercover to infiltrate a smuggling operation on both sides of the border. While the hero is not an immigrant, the film does a surprisingly good job of steering clear of the white savior that so many movies do. Although ostensibly a B-movie, it is elevated by the performances, John Alton’s stark cinematography, and a score by then 20-year-old André Previn. It’s also set in the Imperial Valley where I’m from, so I have an extra-special soft spot for it.
BORDERLINE (1980 – Jerrold Freedman)
When a border patrol agent is killed by a coyote, Jeb Maynard (Charles Bronson) hunts down the murderer. One of the first major films to focus on the subject, it would be easy to dismiss this as a “Charles Bronson movie,” but there’s a lot more going on here. It actually manages to find a balance between the relatively accurate depictions of both the Border Patrol and the migrant experience. Also it’s hard to pass up a movie with Bronson, Wilford Brimley, Bruno Kirby, John Ashton, and “introducing Ed Harris.” Sympathetic in its portrayal, if a little simplistic in its characterization.
THE BORDER (1982 – Tony Richardson)
Another story of a Border Patrol agent trying to do the right thing. When Charlie Smith (Jack Nicholson) transfers to a deeply corrupt Border Patrol station in Texas, he goes along with everyone until an immigrant woman’s child is stolen to be sold on the black market. With Valerie Perrine, Harvey Keitel, and Warren Oates heading up the supporting cast, it’s full of great moment and lines (“I married a banana!”), even if the parts don’t always add up to the whole. Ultimately, this is a good movie that could have been so much better.
LONE STAR (1996 – John Sayles)
While I wouldn’t call the parts of the story dealing with immigration peripheral, LONE STAR cuts such a wide swath through two generations of history, it ends up being about so much more. However, the fact that it’s set in a town called Frontera, and everything centers around the complexity of border life and the ever-changing history in the relationship between the people on both sides of the border. The cast is incredible and the amount of story that Sayles manages to fit into just over two hours is a master class in economy, characterization, and plotting.
DIRTY PRETTY THINGS (2002 – Stephen Frears)
The first non-American movie on the list and also the first from the immigrants’ point of view. Focusing on a West African and a Turk (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor and Audrey Tautou, respectively) in London, navigating a world full of men who are willing to exploit them at every turn. It shows us that no matter the border, the story is the same. People looking for a better life, facing the perils of the their new home. Taking the focus away from the journey to cross the border allows the movie to explore the ways in which people exploit the desperate. Devastating and beautiful.
THE THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA (2005 – Tommy Lee Jones)
A simple story that plays as parable. After Border Patrol agent Mike Norton (Barry Pepper) kills Melquiades Estrada (Julio Cedillo) in suspicious circumstances, Estrada’s friend Pete Perkins (Tommy Lee Jones) kidnaps Norton and forces him to unearth the body and help him take Estrada to Mexico for a proper burial. Something as simple as treating an unauthorized migrant’s dead body with respect manages to illustrate how migrants can often be viewed as disposable and easily replaced in the United States.
FROZEN RIVER (2008 – Courtney Hunt)
Desperate for money, Ray Eddy (Melissa Leo) takes a job transporting Chinese immigrants over a frozen river. Stories of illegal immigration tend to be stories of desperation, not just from the point of the view of the migrants, but often those that transport them. There is a whole genre of stories that give the traffickers a moral out, by creating circumstances that make it their only option for survival (also common with other smuggling stories). What I would call “the good coyote” story. FROZEN RIVER is one of the only stories on the list with a female protagonist. Leo’s Oscar-nominated performance is captivating. I never didn’t believe her. Works as a thriller, but ultimately character-driven.
SIN NOMBRE (2009 – Cary Joji Fukunaga)
A group of migrants make the long journey from the south with Mara Salvatrucha gang members on their heels. The only other entry on this list where the main characters are immigrants, rather than peripheral players or cargo. Where the more straight dramas (EL NORTE, A BETTER LIFE, etc.) tend to make the migrant the hero of the story, in crime stories there’s a tendency to keep the migrant at a distance. Most notable about SIN NOMBRE beyond the attention to detail is its pace. It never lets up, but at the same time always makes an effort to make each character fully formed and not just an idea.
BIUTIFUL (2010 – Alejandro González Iñárritu)
Buoyed by an absolutely stunning performance by Javier Bardem, this quiet story of a career criminal’s final months is the least crimey of these crime films. Bardem plays Uxbal, a hustler who wrangles the African immigrants who sell knockoff purses for a Chinese snakehead in Barcelona. Everything he does is shady, including his ability to talk to the dead (hints of magical realism throughout), but there’s also a genuine effort for redemption even when he’s making things worse. Even if they’re kept at a distance, it’s refreshing to see any story about the African and Chinese immigrant experience in Europe.
SEA FOG (2014 – Shim Sung-bo)
A group of down-on-their-luck fisherman agree to transport migrants from China into Korea. Everything goes wrong. Co-written by Bong Joon-ho of PARASITE fame, what starts as a story of two groups of desperate people quickly turns into Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Nobody trusts everyone else and when push comes to shove, the men on the boat find it surprisingly easy to treat the migrants as less-than-human. The fact that the crew is all men is even more telling when morality starts to devolve.
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