El Mar la Mar

Under the merciless sun of the Sonoran Desert between Mexico and the United States, undocumented immigrants traverse an unforgiving terrain. El Mar la Mar weaves sublime 16mm images of nature, animals, people, and their traces into a multifaceted panorama of a deeply politicised and deadly borderland.

Joshua Bonnetta and J. P. Sniadecki: 'For outsiders, the vastness and strangeness of the desert resembles the sea. It is hard to orient yourself and easy to get lost amidst all the visual noise. Gradually, you get your bearings; you notice signs, prints, familiar formations; you can begin to read the landscape. But even still, it is a wild, unpredictable, treacherous place, much like the sea can be.

While making this desert film, we were also mindful of the Mediterranean Sea, where thousands of refugees have perished as they try to make it to Europe. Like the Sonoran Desert, the Mediterranean is not only a site of massive migration, but also a natural feature that has been charged with the responsibility for thousands of refugee deaths. In both cases, the fatal punishment has been conveniently outsourced to a desert or a sea.

Europe has its varied responses, while in the U.S., we call it "Prevention Through Deterrence", which is a euphemism for funnelling migrants into lethal terrain… We chose the title El Mar la Mar to include both the masculine and the feminine constructions of "the sea" in Spanish to highlight the existence of, and help break down, not only the pernicious borders between identities, nations, and lands, but also dichotomous ways of thinking.’