It's an old story, yet renewed and more atrocious each day. Risking their lives, leaving everyyhing behind, the poor make the move to the other side in hopes of securing survival. But once there, they find they are not wanted for anything more than the lowest jobs that no one else wants to do. In this film, the 'other side', is North Amercia, and the poor are mostly Mexicans. Chantal Akeman gives these men, women and children the chance to tell their dramatic tales, which they do with surprising simplicity: their arrival from the south, their arginalized lives in the north, the few success stories among their ranks. With US Marshals often hot on their trail, desperate migrants risk death crossing the desert on foot to enter the United States illegally. 'De l'autre coté' is an extremely lucid narrative, shot to provide strong visula impact, as in the sequences filmed along the wall that as been contructed in a strech of US - Mexican border.
