What inspired me to create this film was my connection to this place and this community.

Living on the border of El Paso, Texas, and ciudad Juarez and observing the shifts and changes that happened to the Rio Grande throughout the year, then I have this feeling of sadness whenever that river dries up and also a feeling of sadness around how that river has been used as a political weapon towards people who are exercising their human right to migrate.

I think the most important part of the writing process is to know what you're saying and why.

For my for myself.

So a lot of the films that I've made, I feel either a connection to the people who are involved or the themes that are a part of my films.

And so I really draw upon listening to people's stories and taking my time to just sit and meditate on what I want to say, how am I going to use this platform to perhaps change people's minds for the better or influence people to be more compassionate or understanding.

As far as my writing I drew a lot of inspiration from sitting next to the river in front of this tree that I visit all the time and posing questions that I have personally around important issues and themes that that I like to to highlight in my work.

And I sit there and just allow these ideas and these thoughts to circulate and start to put them down on paper without thinking twice about it.

And then it goes through a series of like refinements, or I might send it to someone that I respect or that I think has a a better idea of what kind of stories I want to tell and, you know, get like a second or third opinion and then come back to the drawing board and and tighten up whatever it is I'm trying to say I've learned and I was reminded of how much talent there is here.

And, you know, working with you all, working with people from PBS El Paso, working with, you know, editors from El Paso and the director of photography, who's originally from El Paso.

I feel like that talent that we have here needs to be cultivated and we need to how important it is to elevate each other so that people feel empowered and not afraid to tell more stories because that needs to happen on the border.

We need to put a face to our stories and, like I say, humanize the border.

And I also learned that even if I'm trying to share a certain viewpoint, it's okay that it might not reach everybody and not everybody might like the film that I'm making.

But one person could possibly have a change of heart and that's enough.

One person having a change of heart is enough.

My hope is for our community on the border to honor our heritage and honor our connection to the land, to remember that the Rio Grande sits on a migratory path that spans back to 20,000 years.

And when we view migration in that way, it's harder to put these boundaries on the right for people to move in order to seek a better life.

I hope that audience members and people who view this start to reimagine another type of relationship to the Rio Grand Rivers are supposed to be places where life thrives.

It's supposed to be places where we should be able to, you know, enjoy a flowing, healthy river that feeds the plants and animals and that attracts community instead of it being a place where people die.

It was incredible working with PBS El Paso.

You know, the fact that you all are from the border I feel like having you all part it was just like extremely complimentary and extremely helpful.

It was incredible having women, talented, creative women on the team that were willing to, you know, go to the border and and film the National Guard and cross the bridge and and just really help me capture the vision that I had.

I'm just incredibly grateful to them.

And I know that this film wouldn't have - it wouldn't be what it is without your help.

Yeah, I think first and foremost having a connection to the story So the fact that, you know, I'm from a lineage of people who had to cross the river in one way or another to seek a better life.

And also I think in this particular film, I made sure that when we documented the small group of migrants in downtown El Paso, that they gave permission to share their faces and to share their themselves on camera.

And I also feel like I can't tell their story for the and so I think that there's a responsibility to combat the harmful rhetoric that's been spewed about the border.

And I made sure to make this this particular film as close to my own experience and my my own perspective, my own personal history as I could.

And since it's a documentary, I also made sure that everything that's said in that film were facts.

So PBS has a program called Reel South, and they were accepting applications for funding.

And the protocol was that it had to be a short film and it had to be about an environmental issue.

And so I applied for that grant and was approved.

And I already had an idea I wanted to do on the Rio Grande.

And I ended up receiving that support.

And along with that support came mentorship from Reel South.

And, you know, they helped with getting my film into film festivals and mentoring me around some of the curation of the of the film or mentoring me around the storyline, making sure that I'm on track with where we were headed And it was it was a really awesome opportunity.