Dirty Feathers

Brandon strokes his pregnant wife Reagan’s belly and speaks to their unborn child: “Boy, you got me scared as hell, boy. But it’s alright.” On the streets of the US-Mexican border towns of El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, we meet several people – including a grieving father, a war veteran and a 16-year-old – who are living without a home. At night, many of them sleep in the shelters of the OC, the Opportunity Center for the Homeless in El Paso, but during the day it is a matter of somehow surviving on the streets. Together and individually, they reflect on their past, their backgrounds and the here and now and share their dreams, their desires and their hopes for the future that are keeping them alive. Mexican photographer and filmmaker Carlos Alfonso Corral’s first feature-length documentary is characterised by a strong sense of intimacy. The immediacy of the film’s black-and-white, hand-held photography puts us right there alongside the protagonists as we accompany them during their daily lives on the margins of society, lives in which some are struggling with trauma, addiction and police violence. (Berlinale)