A Community Screening – Borderland: The Line Within
October 26, 2025
5:00 pm - 7:30 pm
The Latchis
50 Main St. Brattleboro VT 05301
Borderland: The Line Within is an acclaimed 2024 documentary film by Pamela Yates and Paco de Onis that explores the “border industrial complex” – the system profiting from immigrant exploitation, presented through the personal stories of activists and data visualizations. Critics praise its multidisciplinary approach, compelling human narratives, and urgent call to action, though some viewers find the structure and data presentation jarring.
There is a war on immigrants being waged every day in our country, and not just along the southern border – we have become a Borderland, the border is everywhere and within every immigrant. A massive surveillance, militarized and carceral apparatus has been built to capture, detain and deport millions of immigrants. Conservative forces which seek to influence government policy have created a road map for the mass deportation of immigrants. This is a travesty and we need to shift public opinion to support a movement for policy reform that values the human rights and aspirations of immigrants, and welcomes the economic and cultural contributions they bring to our society. The protagonists of Borderland | The Line Within, all immigrants themselves, express these values while exposing the border industrial complex that provides the scaffolding for the war on immigrants.
About the filmmakers: Paco de Onís and Pamela Yates – Paco is the Executive Director and Pamela is the co-founder of Skylight, a human rights media organization dedicated to strengthening social justice movements through cinematic storytelling and catalyzing collaborative networks of artists and activists. In many ways BORDERLAND brings the saga of Skylight’s Guatemala trilogy–When the Mountains Tremble (1983), Granito (2011), and 500 Years (2017)–full circle back to the U.S. – from the impact of U.S. foreign policy that backed brutal regimes leading to the root causes of migration, to the present situation of mass migration from Central America.
