POV
Where Soldiers Come From
Feeling trapped in their hometown, five friends join the National Guard and begin their journey from teenagers to soldiers to veterans.
Letters from the Other Side
Several Mexican women live with cross-border video letters connecting them, their loved ones, and strangers.
- Series
- PBS Plus Presentation
- Premiere Date
- October 1, 2006
- Length
- 60 minutes
- Funding Initiative
- Open Call
Producer
Heather Courtney
Heather Courtney is an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, and a Guggenheim, Sundance, and Fulbright fellow. Her film Where Soldiers Come From (POV) was funded by ITVS, and won an Emmy and an Independent Spirit Award. Other films include The Unafraid (America ReFramed), and the IDA and SXSW Award-winning Los Trabajadores (Indie Lens).
- Other ITVS Films
- Breaking the News
- Los Trabajadores/The Workers
- Where Soldiers Come From
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Learn more about funding opportunities with ITVS.
The Film
"How many more deaths does it take for the U.S. government to do something? Let it be on their conscience that since our tragedy many more have died and many more will die!"
So says Laura in a video letter to the U.S. government, speaking about her husband who died trying to cross the U.S./Mexico border to search for work. Letters from the Other Side interweaves video letters carried across the U.S./Mexico border with the intimate stories of women left behind in post-NAFTA Mexico. By focusing on a side of the immigration story rarely told by the media or touched upon in our national debate, Letters paints a complex portrait of families torn apart by economics, communities dying at the hands of globalization, and governments incapable or unwilling to do anything about it.
