La empresa

Some Germans climb a hill and film a village that they didn't actually want to film. This is roughly how this consistent and subtly ironic exploration of the Caminata nocturna, a questionable real-life simulation in which participants in Mexico can re-enact the illegal border crossing into the USA, including a chase and desert march, begins. André Siegers mixes precisely framed and casually shot black and white images of the village of El Alberto with a voiceover that smugly distances itself from the action in order to show points of contact between cinematic working methods and economies and such a tourist attraction. Behind the scenes: In his shots of the village community, Siegers shows the human as well as the capitalist framework of the simulation, consciously making himself part of it. In this way, he puts his finger in the acute wounds of representation: who owns these images and who owns the migration stories that are told through them? (P.H.)

Photo: Austrian Film Museum