Walk the Line | Jingmei Junior High School
Films screened
Walk the Line
In 2023 more than 37,000 Chinese citizens fled the world's second-largest economy, becoming the fastest-growing group at the US–Mexico border. Most crossed rainforest on foot from South America and passed through several countries to enter the United States without papers. Chinese migrants call this journey zouxian — "walking the line".
In the spring of 2023 the Wainao team travelled with Chinese migrants from Turkey to Ecuador, from Colombia to Panama, across the Darién Gap and north, and finally into the United States from Mexico. Among them are a same-sex couple harassed by police, an unemployed man in middle age who had lived a year in a roadside van to escape zero-COVID lockdowns, middle-class families willing to risk the crossing with babies on their backs, and single women seeking freedom. Eight months later the team found these travellers again in the United States, capturing the extraordinary resilience and determination of ordinary people. Through first-hand footage and extended interviews, the film asks why they set out and what distance remains between their dreams and life after arrival.
Walk the Line took nearly a year and a half from plan to completion, with a core team drawn from several countries across four continents. Alongside individual stories it sets out the political conditions and human rights crisis behind the phenomenon.