Al Otro Lado (To the Other Side), a film by Natalia Almada, 2005.
Available at Icarus Films.
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Natalia Almada made this film nearly two decades ago, in 2005. Some things have changed since then, especially with the anti-corruption campaigns AMLO and Morena have waged and the changes the AMLO years have made in the lives of working and poor people. But border issues most certainly remain, and Almada develops this fine film’s overarching theme through the story of Magdiel, an aspiring 23-year-old corrido singer.
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Magdiel is bursting at the seams to gain an audience and make money, without having to work for the drug cartels. He believes he can make all this happen if he can just cross onto the border’s “other side.”
On-the-ground reality, filmmaker Almada shows, complicates all that. People can rarely see past their immediate needs or envision a future outside of their direct experience. Poverty does unimaginable things to people who have no access to money, jobs, and choices.
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We’ve seen in the United States a recent and understandable pushback against the glorification of cartel life in the narcocorridos. The stories Almada tells play out raw. She’s done a masterful job interweaving visual, musical, and visceral elements into a story with no end.
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Alamada’s editing takes us right along with her into the strains and binds that make people faced with impossible dilemmas feel like they’re going to explode.
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In the course of this documentary, Almada talks with corrido singers and musicians, border crossers, and coyotes. She introduces us to real — and self-appointed — border patrol agents, documented and undocumented immigrants on both sides of the border, young people, old people, and everyone in between.
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Al Otro Lado shares honest talk about the cartels and the roles they play in Sinaloa, a community with few options. Almada journeys with people as they try to cross to the “other side,” as they live their daily lives, as they try to support their families and live with dignity, joy, and growth.
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Almada’s film never gets sentimental or academic. She has a gift for understanding and displaying complexity.
Times change, but the immigration story remains with us, told ever so well in this universal tale of Everyman.
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Activist Vicky Hamlin, a retired tradeswoman, shop steward, and painter, shines the light — in her art and this column — on the lives of working people and the world they live in.
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