45th Parallel
Synopsis
Focusing on the Haskell Free Library and Opera House – a unique municipal site that straddles the jurisdictions of Canada and the United States – the work continually recasts the border as at once powerful yet facile, absurd yet lethal.
Filmed on location to activate the legal and symbolic potential of the site, 45th PARALLEL unfolds as a monologue in five acts, performed by acclaimed filmmaker Mahdi Fleifel. The story centres on Hernández vs. Mesa, a judicial case covering the fatal shooting in 2010 of an unarmed fifteen-year-old Mexican national by a US Border Patrol agent. At the supreme court Mesa’s bullet, which crossed the US/Mexico border, began to implicate missiles fired in Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia and Libya. If this murder could be tried in the US, so too could 91,340 drone strikes.
Official Selection New York Film Festival 2022 - World premiere
Official Selection International Film Festival Rotterdam 2023
http://lawrenceabuhamdan.com/45th-parallel
Details
- Year
- 2022
- Type of film
- Shorts
- Running Time
- 15 min
- Format
- Video and two painted backdrops
- Director
- Lawrence Abu Hamdan
- Producer
- Luke W. Moody
- Director of Photography
- Jarred Alterman
- Principal Cast
- Mahdi Fleifel
Production status
Complete
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Last updated 5th January 2023
