Walls

Synopsis

Walls, especially those placed along national borders and boundaries, are essentially contradictory structures, fortifying the (imagined) integrity of nation-states while severing communities, constraining movement, and fueling mistrust. They are sites of inclusion and exclusion, dividing yet connecting people who conceive of their own identities partly in relation to which side of a wall they stand on. Pablo Iraburu and Migueltxo Molina’s Walls hinges on these and other paradoxes, underscoring the similarities between three different areas divided in both literal and figurative ways. This ambitious, multilingual production brings together several stories that are as timely and relevant as they are dramatically intense. Its regionally dispersed look at enforced partitions takes the viewer to the boundaries between South Africa and Zimbabwe, Morocco and Spain, and Mexico and the United States. Ironically, the film suggests that a common sense of humanity can be derived from a shared sense of division. As barbed wire, fences, gates, and other barriers spring up with greater and more pernicious insistency in our own corner of the world, motion pictures like this might be one of our best defenses against hopelessness or resignation.

– By David Scott Diffrient