Films about the US-Mexican border

The US and Mexico went to war in the mid-19th century over the state of Texas, which had belonged to Mexico but was then annexed by the US. This long-running border dispute was often portrayed by Hollywood in westerns that detailed violent skirmishes between American settlers and the Mexican army. Among the most spectacular was "Alamo" (1960), starring John Wayne and Richard Widmark.

In 1958, Marlene Dietrich made an impressive guest appearance in the brilliant frontier thriller "Touch of Evil." Director Orson Welles, who played a lead role in the film, made the border region between Mexico and the US the scene of corruption, drug trafficking and crime.

When John Wayne appeared in "Alamo," the great era of the American western was almost over. But when the genre boomed in the 1950s, many westerns were set in the borderland between the US states of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona on one side and Mexico on the other. A symbolic landmark was the border river, the Rio Grande, namesake for director John Ford's legendary western from 1950.

However, the border between the two countries managed to retain its prominence in numerous later westerns. The region played an especially prominent role in Sam Peckinpah's "Wild Bunch" (1969), a blood-soaked wild west epic that tells of lawlessness in a forgotten land.

The American director Robert Anthony Rodriguez has a passion for the border region, which is perhaps due to his Mexican roots. Many of his films play with the collision of cultures in this borderland. His 1996 film "From Dusk Till Dawn," for example, saw Quentin Tarantino and George Clooney play bank robbing brothers who hightail it to the Mexican border.

"No Country for Old Men," the 2007 Oscar-winning film directed by brothers Joel and Ethan Coen, is about drugs, mafia, murder, and fraud. It also plays out in a dangerous place where death is common and few grow old - at the US-Mexican border.

Albuquerque in New Mexico is the setting for the immensely popular TV series "Breaking Bad," which was produced between 2008 and 2013. The series again repeats the theme of so many stories that are situated in the region: drugs. And so, not far away, a short distance south of Albuquerque, lies the legendary border.

If a movie is titled "Trade," then it's probably either a comedy or a drama. The Bavarian director Marco Kreuzpaintner picked for his 2007 drama, telling the story of Mexican children who cross the border to the US as part of human sex slave trafficking. Hollywood star Kevin Kline played the lead role.

"Sicario" examines the impact of the drug wars on the border area between Arizona and Mexico. Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve made the fast-paced drug thriller in 2015 with Benicio del Toro in the lead. It was filmed in southern Arizona.

The issue of cross-border drug dealing seems to have a magical pull on directors. British Hollywood filmmaker Ridley Scott tried his hand in 2013 with a thriller from the border region. "The Counselor," starring Brad Pitt and Michael Fassbender, was filmed in El Paso, Texas and in Spain.

It was director Steven Soderbergh who rang in the era of drug war films 17 years ago. In "Traffic," he portrays the complex relationship between the police, drug gangs, politicians and authorities - whose ties to each other are all inextricably interwoven across the border.

In addition to westerns and drug thrillers, numerous detective stories and murder mysteries have been set at the US-Mexican border. A classic from the genre is Robert Altman's 1973 film "The Long Goodbye," based on a novel by Raymond Chandler. The film was shot in California, but also in Tepoztlán in Mexico.

Star Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu filmed the multiple narrative drama "Babel" in 2006. It traces the interlaced fates of various people from different regions in the world. "Babel" is a cinematic parable about the question of what the border means to people in times of globalization.

There isn't much to laugh about at the border. Most of the films that deal with US-Mexican ties tend to be serious. But in 2004, James L. Brooks made the comedy "Spanglish" about a cliché encounter between a wealthy American (Adam Sandler) and a Mexican house cleaner (Paz Vega).

In recent years, more and more films have been made about immigration and poverty in the region. Last year, the German-French-Mexican co-production "Soy Nero" premiered at the Berlinale film festival. Director Rafi Pitts, with roots in Iran, tells the story of a young Mexican who crosses the border to the US in search of a better life.

Perhaps the most impressive film about South-to-North migration was made by Cary Fukunaga in 2009. "Sin Nombre" portrays the fate of several young people from Mexico who are trying to make it to the US. While some are trying to escape criminal gangs from their hometowns, others are hoping for heaven on earth.