The Second Cooler / La Segunda Nevera

Looks at illegal immigration in relationship to the North American Free Trade Agreement, the militarization of the US / MX border, legal barriers to legal migration, the Guest Worker Program, and migrant deaths. Interviews with numerous migrants, including three children under the age of 12 and a migrant we helped rescue in Arizona, authorized Guest Workers, lawyers, political scientists, a Border Patrol agent, union organizers and others.
The Second Cooler consists of three overlapping story lines. First, illegal migrants talk about their lives and their experiences crossing borders illegally. Second, it proposes that illegal migrants’ lives and deaths are entangled with historical, economic, legal, racial, and social issues on both sides of the border. Third, visual motifs including white crosses and snarling police dogs relate these issues while emphasizing the approximately 5,000 migrants whose bodies have been recovered from the American southwest. Original songs and score.