“On Entry”: When a customs officer is concerned about your future

A woman and a man, deeply in love, board a plane bound for the United States. She is excited. He almost forgets his passport. Their arrival was highly anticipated, first in New York where they would move, then to Miami. They just have to go through customs. Then the dreaded words: Do they want to come?

Debut director duo Juan Sebastian Vázquez and Alejandro Rojas set their first feature film against the backdrop of February 15, 2019, when President Trump declared a state of emergency in the United States to force Congress to give him billions of dollars to build a wall between the United States. Mexico and immigration prevention.

When you hear that in Spanish on the radio as Elena and Diego take the taxi to the airport, you automatically assume that they must also be Mexican or from South America. Oh, a movie like this, about discrimination against travelers from south of the border. Especially when a customs guy later at Newark Airport asked them point blank again if they were from Latin America. Isn’t this usually how movies introduce their characters and plot? By providing background information through news reports, street signs and bookcases? To play with shortcuts and expectations in the viewer’s head? Unless they want to confuse the viewer and wake him up with a single wave of the hand inside upon entry It is happening.

The claustrophobic thriller—we barely leave Elena and Diego’s interrogation room in seventy minutes—not only plays with our prejudices, it also redeems them. And you can’t imagine anything crazy in terms of suspicion and distrust without him mentioning that. As a result, your empathy is constantly changing. Aside from the amazing confrontation between two citizens and two civil servants, it is a great painting upon entry As well as an unflattering picture of all the forms of doubt that exist among people. And so it gets to the heart of what may be the key question in understanding our zeitgeist: How are we ultimately supposed to live together if we are systematically pitted against each other, constantly encouraged to mistrust each other, and to look down on each other? Others with fear and doubt? Who is the customs officer who stands between you and your future? Random ? the law? Or your conscience?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8awDm7Zbn5k