In "From the Other Side" renowned director Chantal Akerman provides an unsentimental look at the plight of illegal Mexican immigrants as they attempt the dangerous crossing from Agua Prieta in Sonora, Mexico, to Douglas, Ariz. Akerman assumes an unobtrusive and objective standpoint, avoiding an omniscient narrator, who “might suggest an unequal power relationship between filmmaker and the filmed,” and using long camera angles that capture the miles of fence along the Mexico-Arizona border to produce an air of uninterrupted verisimilitude. |