Reality bites for reel women

When they began shooting Bordertown — the new Jennifer Lopez film about the hundreds of murdered women of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico — director Gregory Nava and executive producer Barbara Martinez Jitner expected that their film would stir up strong reactions.

Lost forever

Since 1993, the bodies of more than 400 female victims, many abused and mutilated, have been found in the area around Ciudad Juárez, a sprawling metropolis where many poor women work for maquiladoras (factories). Scores of additional women throughout the region, across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, have been reported missing.

While en route to the Berlin Film Festival, where the film will have its world premiere, Nava said — in an interview — he is not surprised by the hostile reception in some quarters, given the issues that Bordertown raises and the blame for the murders that it assigns not only to the Mexican government, but to the US and the multinational-assembly plants spawned by the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta).

"There are very powerful forces involved, you're going to be attacked," said Nava, a Mexican American who was born in San Diego. "I expect the Mexican government to get very upset about it."

Star assembly

Bordertown stars Lopez as a US reporter investigating the murders and Antonio Banderas as a Mexican newspaper colleague. The cast also includes Martin Sheen and Sonia Braga. Maya Zapata plays a young factory worker whose plight exposes the crimes of Juárez.

Much of the film was shot in and around Albuquerque, New Mexico, with additional shooting in the Mexican border town of Nogales and in Juárez.

However, said Jitner, who is also the film's second-unit director, principal actors were kept out of Juárez because of death threats against Nava and the cast.

On the first day of photography in Juárez, a film-production assistant was arrested and questioned by local police, Jitner said. According to the film's production notes, the police then began stalking the crew and threatening local people who were assisting the production.

Missing valuables

Jitner said her hotel room was broken into and a camera truck was burgled, with equipment, valued at $100,000 (Dh367,300), stolen.

Although the filmmakers did file a complaint about the stolen equipment, they decided not to speak publicly at that time about the other incidents. "If we made a big stink, the people who would pay the price were these women," Jitner said.

"Now that the film is coming out, this is the proper time."

Luz del Carmen Sosa, a spokeswoman for the Ciudad Juárez secretary of public security, said she had no record of any arrest of a film-production assistant and it was not true that anyone had been harassed during shooting.
"We totally respect freedom of expression," she said.

"The city is damaged, and it doesn't deserve to be demeaned for nothing more than personal

enrichment, because we are making an enormous effort to clean up the image, in order to work for the benefit of citizenry."

One group, Amnesty International, says it has documented numerous investigative delays,

inadequate evidence gathering, sloppy forensic examinations, falsification of evidence and allegations of torture by Chihuahua state police in obtaining information and confessions in connection with the murders.

Final endorsement

Bordertown is being endorsed by Amnesty International, which reviewed draft versions of the screenplay and provided feedback on the film's factual accuracy, said Bonnie Abaunza, director of Artists for Amnesty, a Los Angeles-based programme of Amnesty International USA that works with artists and entertainers to raise awareness of human-rights issues.

Abaunza said that although the film is told in the style of a thriller, it is rooted in hard, disturbing facts.

The film's prologue gives context to the story of the murders and a number of scenes, including one shot inside a Mitsubishi TV plant, lend authenticity to the story's socio-economic setting, she said.

"There are some very hard political statements made in this movie, about Nafta and corporations," she said, referring to the free trade agreement between Mexico, Canada, Central American countries and the US.

Abaunza and others hope the film will spur the Mexican government to act to protect women along the border. But first, someone has to see it.

Not invited

The Mexican Embassy in Berlin said it never received an invitation to a gala screening held for the film as part of the festival activities.

Lino Santacruz Moctezuma, who handles media for the embassy, said Mexican Ambassador Jorge Castro-Valle Kuehne "plans to watch the movie later in a private setting".

"If the embassy would get invitations, many of us would be happy to see the movie," he said.