Transpecos and the Border Between Self and Other

Over 60 percent of all U.S. Border Patrol Agents are Latino.
“Just think about the dramatic implications of that for a person realizing that they might be stopping someone who might have been their grandfather or grandmother coming across,” Transpecos co-writer Clint Bentley says. “It opens up the whole drama for a character to dig into.”
First-time narrative feature co-writer/director Greg Kwedar became a filmmaker after having volunteered at a girls’ orphanage just across the border in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. He began documenting these trips to the orphanage and particularly a story of six-year-old Juanita that eventually lead to Transpecos.
“When we’d go through the checkpoints and meet these Border Patrol Agents,” remembers the recent Austin-transplant, “there’d be this very one-dimensional interaction where they’d just ask if I was an American citizen. I thought they were just robots, but when it came time to make my first film, I wanted to come back to the source of why I started as a filmmaker. It was to tell stories that brought people to a place they didn’t understand; that helps [us] understand the human connection.”
Transpecos is a thriller that was shot for 16 days in 120-degree weather in the desert of New Mexico. The story takes place over 24 hours and weaves the personalities of Border Patrol Agent (BPA) veteran agent Lou Hobbs (Clifton Collins Jr.), newbie agent Benjamin Davis (Johnny Simmons) and steady-handed agent Lance Flores (Gabriel Luna) into a tale of desperate circumstances. While the drama is fictionalized, the story so deftly pulls the curtain back on a profession we so often only hear of in a negative light to show us people we’d otherwise never have occasion to interact with.
“The subject matter is important to me,” says Collins Jr., who’s great grandmother bribed her way across the border into Texas with a nickel, as was custom back then. “I think any films that address social injustices, acts against humanity and things of that nature and that raise those kinds of questions are important films [to make].”
Collins Jr. is one of the most talented chameleons in the business, able to morph into characters that stick in your mind for decades. With his breadth of experience and dedication to the art of acting, he’d rally the Transpecos team together after the long days in the high heat.