I was really happy to discover a film like this one. I first heard about this film at the Mill Valley Film Fest but I had missed the screening so I was lucky to get a chance to see it at the Woodstock Film Festival. When the screening was over I sat there in awe and with tons of questions. The premise behind the documentary is a guy traveling with migrants as they try to illegally enter the U.S. by crossing the Texas desert. The director, Davis, seems to employ the Pennebaker style of realism with a jittery camera and the frankness common to a Maysles documentary. At first this seems to be too much, but once the film gets going you realize it was the only way to capture this secret world. Throughout the film the threat of death and getting lost in the desert is omnipresent.
My only real critique of the movie is the lack of dialogue, but during the question and answer session the director mentioned that this was the nature of the characters. For better or worse he said he chose not to prod them for conversation in an effort to keep it as real as possible. In this day and age where it's common to see a director insert him or herself into his or her movie, it was refreshing to see this young director employ restraint and remain behind the camera.