Every year in the spring, community members and creatives gather and sit down in rows of folding chairs along the border wall — on both sides — to watch the same movie simultaneously.
The annual Nogales International Film Festival has brought together the border communities of Nogales, Arizona, and Nogales, Sonora, for nearly 16 years by showcasing films against the backdrop of the border wall.
Oscar Coronado, film festival director, said the event is not done with a specific political stance, nor is it held because organizers "want to send a message to the world."
"The event itself is created to entertain the community," specifically people who haven't been "well addressed and well represented," Coronado said.
The main goal of the event, scheduled for May 11-17, is to promote the unification of communities that live along the border, said Francisco Landin, film festival managing director.
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The film festival was founded by Samuel Saunders in 2010, Landin said.
Coronado said it was originally called the Santa Cruz Film Festival. It underwent a name change and became the Borderlands Film Festival until 2023, when the Southern Arizona Film Society took over the event and rebranded it as the Nogales International Film Festival.
Festival seeks to celebrate 'Ambos Nogales'
The festival screens a variety of regional and international independent films, from features to documentaries.
Last year's lead feature was "Absence of Eden," a 2023 film starring Zoe Saldaña, about an undocumented woman and an ICE agent torn about his job, who work together to save a young girl.
The opening night film for 2026 has not yet been revealed.
Even though part of the film festival is being held right at the border wall, Coronado emphasized the film festival was not advocating for a specific border policy. Rather, he said it was meant to unify the attendees, who mostly come from Nogales, Arizona, and Nogales, Sonora.
Landin referred to Nogales, Sonora, and Nogales, Arizona, as "one city divided by a wall": Ambos Nogales.
"If you go down to Nogales, maybe like on a Sunday afternoon, you'll see on the border wall people having lunch on one side with people on the other side that can't cross. You'll see families sitting there together with a border just dividing them. And this is a very impactful thing to see," Landin said.
The Nogales International Film Festival is a reminder that the two cities can be united through community events, "especially through film," that "create one community event," Landin said.
Coronado said, "We do the film festival because we like films, we like festivals, we love the community, and all this helps us to bring together a community of creators and offer them a place, a hub for them to express their art."
Film festival comes amid growing border wall
This year's Nogales International Film Festival comes as the Trump administration has poured billions of dollars from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into border infrastructure.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act was signed into law by President Donald Trump on July 4, 2025, about two months after the 2025 Nogales International Film Festival.
Since its passage, the Department of Homeland Security has invested billions of dollars into hundreds of miles of "smart wall enhancements." Homeland Security has also developed plans to install a secondary border wall along a large portion of Arizona's border with Mexico, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Smart Wall website.
These plans raised alarms for many environmental advocacy groups and the Tohono O'odham Nation, according to reporting from the Arizona Daily Star.
Despite the highly politicized existence of the border wall, Coronado emphasized that the Nogales International Film Festival does not seek to promote a movement or make an annual statement such as "borders are a problem."
"We don't want to do that. We want to offer people a platform. We want to entertain them. We want to help them dream. We want to alleviate them for at least an hour," Coronado said.
Coronado and Landin said this year's film festival has received support from local school districts, Customs and Border Protection and the cities of Nogales, Arizona, and Nogales, Sonora.
Coronado said U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Border Patrol were "very accessible" in answering their questions about permits and hosting an event right along the border wall.
"The political situation and the news are one thing. The reality of the situation on the border is another," Coronado said.
One Nogales across a 'great divide'
As someone who moved from his home city of Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico, to Nogales later in life, Coronado said it would be pretentious if organizers tried to go to Nogales and "tell people in Nogales what type of life they're living when they are living their life there. So we don't make statements, we don't make political things. Film is about entertainment and about expression. And this is what we promote."
The Nogales International Film Festival "serves as a reminder" that the sister cities "can be united through community events, especially through film," Landin said.
The event seeks to "create one community event that encompasses both sides of the border wall," where both sides watch the same film, Landin said.
It's a statement in itself that says "'we're one community across just this great divide that was implanted there,'" he said.
