Crossing Arizona
 Crossing
Arizona is a documentary film which examines both sides of the immigration
debate in Arizona. Crossing Arizona was nominated Best Documentary at the 2006
Sundance Film Festival. It is the winner of the One Future Prize 2006 at the
Munich Film Festival, the Best Documentary at the Arizona International Film
Festival, and audience awards at Cine Las Americas and the Brooklyn
International Film Festival.
Crossing Arizona explores the varied political, practical, and humanitarian
stances of people directly involved in the Arizona immigration influx. It gives
voice to the frustrated farmers who day after day repair fences and pick up
trash; the humanitarians who place water stations in the desert; farmers who
depend upon the illegal work force; political activists who rally against
anti-migrant ballot initiatives, and the Minutemen, armed citizens who patrol
the border.
It is estimated that 4,500 undocumented people try to cross the Southwest’s
Sonoran Desert each day. Heightened security in California and
Texas pushed the
illegal border-crossers into the Arizona desert. The U.S. Border Patrol recorded
253 immigrant deaths in 2005 in Arizona.
Though the initial focus of the documentary was to cover the humanitarian crisis
in Arizona, it evolved to include the political debate on
immigration and,
through the eyes of people with differing agendas, it cast a spotlight on the
inadequacies of U.S. immigration policy in the region.
Director/producer Dan DeVivo is a graduate of Harvard University with a bachelor’s
degree in social anthropology and a penchant toward independent documentary
filmmaking. Based in New York City, he has worked on several projects including
Counting on Democracy, We Are Family, and Refusing to Die: A Kenyan Story. His
goal with Crossing Arizona has been to put a human face on the issue of
immigration.
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