nepantlera, experimental film; 2025. 13:14 min. Photography and video by Pistor Orendain. Music by Angel Deradoorian

nepantlera is an experimental film that documents a series of rituals activated in specific locations along the bodies of water that delineate the border between México and the United States, that is the Gulf of México, the Rio Bravo/Grande River, the Colorado River, the Gila River, The Tijuana River and the Pacific Ocean. La nepantlera, a being/force/goddess/extinct creature embarks on a mythical journey to communicate with the waters that she gave birth to in ancient times. But she soon finds out that the rivers have been raped, and their waters have been partitioned by ambitious unsatiable men. Throughout la nepantlera’s pilgrimage, which begins at the mouth of the Rio Bravo/Grande River in Brownsville, Texas, and concludes at the Pacific Ocean in Tijuana, México, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the historical document that turned these waters into borders, is transgressed, transformed, and consumed through gestures such as marking, sound-making, ripping, chewing, salivating, and soaking. These gestures, involving natural dye, voice, rattle sounds, saliva, ocean and river water, touch, alter, and erode the treaty’s imperialist pages, challenging its authority and reimagining its significance.

This project was created with Anzaldúa’s resonant voice in mind and body, crafted out of a deep concern for the land and human violence that occurs daily in the border, while also considering this space as a complex multilayered watery place where resistance, reciprocity, memory, stories and new possibilities arise.

This is fragment of the experimental film nepantlera.