Director puts human face on divisive issue in ‘The Trade’
Director Matthew Heineman has an uncanny ability to get his camera into difficult places. For his Oscar-nominated documentary “Cartel Land,” he embedded himself with armed vigilante groups fighting the Mexican drug cartels. For “City of Ghosts,” he filmed a group of Syrian journalists in Raqqa who risked their lives to expose Islamic State group atrocities.
His cameras have been just as intrepid for the Showtime documentary series, “The Trade,” which returned March 6 for its second season. People often ask Heineman how he gets such intimate access, he said. But the access is the essence of the job; he wouldn’t bother without it.
The challenge now may be accessing people’s living rooms. Season 1 tackled the opioid crisis, which for all its horrors is not especially polarizing. But Season 2 goes deep into the dangers facing Central American migrants — a subject about which many Americans appear to have made up their minds.
“I think the first priority with this show,” he said, “as with anything I’ve ever done, is to try to take an issue that people think they understand, that’s often plastered across the headlines, and to try to humanize it. To try to put a human face to it.”
Heineman discussed the scope of the four-part Season 2 and the challenges of doing justice to such a complex subject. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
Q: Some viewers will be more willing to see the opioid crisis in humanitarian terms than they do the migrant crisis. What’s missing from the discussion of migrant issues that you try to get at in this series?
A: For one, the migrant crisis and anything involving the border between us and Mexico has been highly politicized. What I’ve tried to do in all my projects is make something that’s apolitical. I believe it’s the job of a documentary to create discussion, to create debate. You can’t just preach to the choir. You have to, hopefully, allow both sides to come to the table and be understood.
That’s one answer. The other is: I think that over the last couple years, when people talk about the migrant crisis, it is so often relegated to the border and to legislation in Washington, and the humanity is lost in the discussion. So I feel like that was our job — to bring back the humanity into the debate.
Q: What are some parallels you see between the two crises?
A: We are tied to Mexico and Central America whether we like it or not. People for decades have immigrated, have been smuggled from Central America — frankly, from around the world — through Mexico into the U.S. This is not something created by our current political climate; this is something that’s been going on for a very, very long time. It’s part of the ecosystem of our country.
But crossing the border used to be much safer. It used to be run by mom-and-pop shops, often family-owned, literally, even a decade ago. Now almost everything that goes across the border, whether it’s drugs or humans, is controlled by the cartel. Now you’re a commodity. You are out in the middle of the desert in the middle of the night with people with guns and masks, and that’s not necessarily a position you want to be in.
Q: Are there elements that will surprise people who take the more liberal-minded position in the immigration debate?
A: You’re trying to make me say political things, and I hate talking about politics. I think that every person who works in law enforcement isn’t evil. We follow Homeland Security personnel, we follow Border Patrol personnel attempting to fight human smuggling, human trafficking. We’re also trying to humanize their perspective and where they’re coming from. One of our characters (a Homeland Security investigator) is of Mexican heritage, and he deeply empathizes with the people coming northward. I feel like it’s my job to try to break preconceived notions of who people are or their motivations for doing what they do.
Q: Still, the politics are fraught. Did your relationships with law enforcement require a lot of trust-building?
A: Absolutely. We knew that law enforcement would be a big part of the story; we had a lot of connections that we built in Season 1. But as always, it takes a long time to actually get cameras rolling and to get into the places you want to get into. One of the benefits of long-form documentary filmmaking is that we have the privilege of time. With so many other forms of journalism, you have one day, two days to get a story.