It’s 2017 in Bisbee, Arizona, an old copper-mining town just miles from the Mexican border. The town’s close-knit community prepares to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Bisbee’s darkest hour: the infamous Bisbee Deportation of 1917, during which 1,200 striking miners were violently taken from their homes, banished to the middle of the desert, and left to die. Townspeople confront this violent, misunderstood past by staging dramatic recreations of the escalating strike. These dramatized scenes are based on subjective versions of the story and “directed,” in a sense, by residents with conflicting views of the event. Deeply personal segments torn from family history build toward a massive restaging of the deportation itself on the exact day of its 100th anniversary.
Direction
Greene blurs documentary and reenactment until you can't trust either.
Editing
Cuts between past and present feel like wounds reopening.
Production
The final deportation reenactment is genuinely staggering in scale.
Director
Robert Greene
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The real Bisbee Deportation was technically illegal — no government authority ordered it, just mining company executives and their deputized thugs.
Greene is a key figure in 'documentary as performance' cinema; this film directly inspired his even more experimental 'Procession' (2021).
US
