Night of the Coyotes review, border-crossing role-play is tourist attraction in struggling Mexican town

Clara Trischler’s absorbing feature sees residents of the small town of El Alberto hired to play characters in a re-enactment of the migrant experience

I n contrast to other migration documentaries, which focus on the new life that awaits those who have crossed the border, Clara Trischler’s absorbing second feature trains its gaze on those who are left behind. The suspenseful opening plunges us into a whirl of familiar images: tense whispers in the dead of night as a ragtag group of people stumble, and even crawl, their way towards an unseen border. All of a sudden a blinding light intrudes, guns are fired in the air: a police car has arrived on the scene.

Observational in style, the film is oddly uninterested in the psychological impact as well as the ethical questions posed by these exercises. On one of these nocturnal outings, for example, a woman is casually picked to be a rape victim, with seemingly little information on what to expect. What Trischler does highlight well, however, is the collective grief that enshrouds El Alberto. From those who are sent back from the US to children separated from their parents, we hear personal stories dominated by the pain of separation. It is not just the border that stands between them, but also a world of missed experiences and emotional voids that can never be filled.