A film being screened at the University of Arizona on Wednesday night tackles the topic of migrants crossing the southern border.
Independent filmmaker Joseph Mathew made a documentary about immigration at the Arizona-Mexico border nearly 20 years ago called “Crossing Arizona.”
Now, he’s made a fictional film based on the reality of what migrants go through on their journeys through the Southern Arizona desert.
” The Long Walk of Carlos Guerrero ” was part of the Arizona International Film Festival last weekend at the MSA Annex.
The story focuses on an undocumented immigrant who is a successful New York City chef, who returns to Mexico to visit his ill mother and then crosses illegally to re-enter the United States. Mathew shot with a small crew in Southern Arizona in late 2020 and 2021.
“I always thought about what it must be to actually be in the shoes of one person, one person crossing the desert,” director Joseph Mathew told KGUN. “So that was the genesis of this idea.”
Mathew even features local humanitarian aid volunteers, from Humane Borders and other groups, in his movie. He said he wants to highlight their work to feed migrants at the border and the “human” side of the immigration issue.