Academy Award-winning actor and Harvard alumnus Tommy Lee Jones returns to campus for this special screening of his big screen directorial debut. Establishing himself as a character actor in the 1970s, Jones became a critics darling for his intense yet stoic performances. He emerged as a leading man in the 1980s with striking turns in the television films The Exectuioner's Song and Lonesome Dove. In the 1990s, Jones became one of the more prolific actors in Hollywood, balancing big budget studio films (The Fugitive, Men in Black) with more personal, independent projects (Blue Sky, House of Cards). Throughout his career, he has embraced a rugged individualism which has endeared him to audiences worldwide.

In the early winter of 2001, Tommy Lee Jones asked Guillermo Arriaga to write a screenplay about the border country between his native West Texas and Northern Chihuahua, Mexico. As a Mexican writer, and a lover of this border country, Arriaga has a vested interest in telling a story that would explore the unique culture of the area-an area that both shares and divides American and Mexican people, customs, and traditions. A West Texas ranch foreman (Jones) kidnaps a border patrolman and forces him to disinter the body of a man who was mysteriously shot and buried in the town cemetery. With his captive in tow and the body tied to a mule, the foreman undertakes a dangerous and quixotic journey into Mexico. Jones's compelling performance and Arriaga's dramatic and poetic script received top honors at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.