Educational Media Reviews Online

Director Heather Courtney puts a twist on immigrant letters by making them video letters. She videotapes interviews with women in rural Mexico abandoned by husbands and sons who originally went to el Norte seeking work that would support those left behind. One of the women asks, “What is it about the United States that makes people forget Mexico.”

The tapes are then shown to the family members in the U.S. which, in turn, produces a new video letter that the filmmaker then takes back to Mexico. Finally, direct video transmission allows a virtual family encounter. The method has a visceral effect that gives both the missing relatives and the promoters of globalization something to answer for. Viewers are drawn in on both the individual and societal levels.

The film shows several levels of abandonment – the ineffectual interventions made by the Mexican government to find new jobs for the women and children who can no longer sustain themselves through agricultural labor; the failure of the U.S. government to humanely control illegal border crossings that cost some family members their lives. Ultimately, the film documents not only the losses but the strength and adaptability of the women who find a way forward based on self-reliance. Letters from the Other Side could serve as a good trigger film on subjects as varied as social planning, globalization, free trade and family formation.