‘The Wall’ film tour stops in Scottsdale
Journalists travel full length of U.S.-Mexico border
A national tour for the USA TODAY NETWORK’s Pulitzer Prize-winning documentary about President Donald Trump’s proposed border wall stopped in Scottsdale this week for screenings and panel discussions with the journalists behind the project.
“The Wall” follows journalists as they travel the entire length of the U.S.-Mexico border by car, foot and helicopter to explore the possible effects of a wall on safety, business, tribal lands, migrant deaths, Americans’ property rights and more.
The documentary is part of the multiplatform project “The Wall: Untold Stories, Unintended Consequences,” led by and the USA TODAY NETWORK. The project won a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting this year.
The documentary includes an array of seldom-seen locations and interviews from the border: Aerial video from the most remote sections, like the steep canyons of Big Bend National Park; U.S. Border Patrol agents recovering bodies from the desert; an interview with a human smuggler.
More than 200 people attended a sold-out screening Monday at Harkins Theaters Scottsdale 101.
After the roughly hourlong documentary, USA TODAY NETWORK Storytellers Project founder and director Megan Finnerty served as the night’s master of ceremonies. She hosted a panel discussion with journalists who worked on the project: Border reporter Rafael Carranza, photographer Michael Chow, reporter Dianna M. Náñez and news director Josh Susong.
As a visual journalist, Chow has covered war and riots but told the crowd that one moment from working on the project has stayed with him more than
More about ‘The Wall’
❚ You can watch a trailer for the film at ❚ Although the documentary is not currently available to the broader public, dozens of videos, articles, aerial footage and podcasts from the project are at other assignments.
He went to Texas for a story about the number of migrants who die while crossing into the United States. There, he visited an organization that works to identify the dead and saw a stack of about 100 3-foot-long cardboard boxes filled with bodies of unidentified migrants.
“This really struck me because we’re there doing a story on numbers, but yet these really aren’t numbers, they’re people,” Chow said. “There’s actually people in these boxes, and that image will forever haunt me.”
Before, during and after the screening and panel, a few members of the pro-Trump activist group Patriot Movement AZ yelled and booed at the film and heckled and said expletives at the panelists.
Patriot Movement AZ is a small but vocal group known for showing up at nearly every political event and protest in metropolitan Phoenix for at least the past year.
The group posted Facebook Live videos of their protest of the film. After the event, founder Lesa Antone, Jennifer Harrison and other members followed, screamed obscenities at and mocked attendees.
The tour opened last weekend at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., and continues in a dozen cities including Nashville, Tennessee; Louisville, Kentucky; Los Angeles and at the Online News Association conference in Austin, Texas. The Republic’s
“This really struck me because we’re there doing a story on numbers, but yet these really aren’t numbers, they’re people. There’s actually people in these boxes, and that image will forever haunt me.”