‘Sicario’ Filmmakers: Mexico a ‘lawless place’
Sicario filmmakers most likely did not need permission from Mexican officials to film in the country, according to film experts.
The film, which centers around an idealistic FBI agent played by Emily Blunt, was released by LionsGate studio in select cities last month and nationwide over the weekend. It received a minutes long standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival and has also been bestowed with Oscar buzz from critics.
Screenwriter Taylor Sheridan, is a native Texan who grew up traveling south of the border. “I realized that Mexico doesn’t exist anymore, the Mexico someone could just drive down into is gone. It’s become this lawless place,” Sheridan states in a publicity packet.
According to publicity material, filmmakers shot the film mostly in Albuquerque, El Paso and Veracruz, Mexico. “While the production did not shoot on the streets of Juarez, the production did shoot over Juarez and the landscape we are seeing in the film is the real Juarez City,” the film’s publicity material states.
According to the publicity material, filmmakers recreated the Bridge of the Americas in El Paso and Albuquerque.
Chuck Horak, a member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association, said filmmakers rarely need permission from local or state governments to shoot films.
“There are governments sometimes that put overt or subtle pressure on filmmakers to show a more favorable part of the country if it’s a high profile movie, but that’s pretty rare,” Horak said in a brief phone conversation on Monday.
Juarez Mayor Enrique Serrano has denounced the movie and asked residents to boycott the film, saying it doesn’t clarify Juarez is a much safer city now than at the height of the drug violence in 2010.
Monica Ortiz Uribe, a radio journalist who has covered the border since 2009 said the mayor’s boycott call is not an effective way to deal with the image the movie portrays.
On ABC-7 Xtra Sunay night, Ortiz Uribe said community organizations in Juarez have said the movie is a reminder the city is still vulnerable to violence and the aftermath of the drug war. Ortiz Uribe said she was disappointed with the film.
“The film felt like a missed opportunity to explore that further – the drug war and its violence,” she said.
The publicity material for the film also states film makers could not find an American law enforcement agency to give them the “go-ahead to go across the border.”
“We went with a Mexican ‘fixer’ who had successfully brought a CNN crew into Juarez a few years ago, and he contacted a bunch of undercover federales who drove us around. They carried submachine guns in the front of the car and told us very specific things like, I should bring glasses with me, since I wore contact lenses, just in case we got stopped and kidnapped. We drove a white SUV because only the cartel guys drive black SUVs and if you drive a black SUV you can get targeted,” producer Basil Iwanyk wrote about a research trip the crew made to Juarez.
“The stories that I’ve come across on the ground in Ciudad Juarez are far more nuanced and complex than what was portrayed in the film. I think the people along the border and away from the border are further away for a greater understanding of what’s occurring – why is this violence so deep and how and why we are a part of it on the American side,” said Ortiz Uribe.
