Since the 1970s, Belgian-born filmmaker Chantal Akerman has made films that deal with questions of identity, sexuality, and politics, making use of forms and techniques from feature films, documentaries, and biographical narratives. Her project for Documenta11, From the Other Side, is part of an ongoing series begun in the early 1990s that explores the impact of political change on the lives of ordinary people. This new work was shot in the US-Mexican border region and concerns the plitght of the thousands of people who risek their lives and leave everything behind in an attempt to migrate northward. Akerman juxtaposes her portraits of these emigrants with the devastating array of obstacles they face—barren windswept landscapes, towering barriers, and the ubiquitious border police. The result is an almost wordless story of survival and an indictment of an oppressive system that governs the fate of the poor in contemporary North America.