Magic Valley, is set in present day reality, in the southernmost region of Texas, known as the Rio Grande Valley. The film moves wearily through the borderlands, often fixing its gaze on others, searching and looking. Birdwatchers congregate to silently praise local wildlife. Border patrol agents circle a militarized boundary where everyone is suspect. Native and migratory wildlife exist in a territory being rattled by migration and climate change and cleaved apart by the ongoing construction of the US separation wall dividing Texas from Mexico.
The film braids together an ethereal space of happenings along the river: crossings, bird watchers, conservationists, wildlife, migrant apprehensions by border patrol, radio broadcasts, wall construction sites, and surveillance technologies with overheard fragments of conversation.
These vignettes reveal realities along the river border that are anathema to the natural flows of people and land. The consequences are mortal. The land is the land no matter where the river bends.
Magic Valley, is set in present day reality, in the southernmost region of Texas, known as the Rio Grande Valley. The film moves wearily through the borderlands, often fixing its gaze on others, searching and looking. Birdwatchers congregate to silently praise local wildlife. Border patrol agents circle a militarized boundary where everyone is suspect. Native and migratory wildlife exist in a territory being rattled by migration and climate change and cleaved apart by the ongoing construction of the US separation wall dividing Texas from Mexico.
The film braids together an ethereal space of happenings along the river: crossings, bird watchers, conservationists, wildlife, migrant apprehensions by border patrol, radio broadcasts, wall construction sites, and surveillance technologies with overheard fragments of conversation.
These vignettes reveal realities along the river border that are anathema to the natural flows of people and land. The consequences are mortal. The land is the land no matter where the river bends.