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"The main problem right now with that subject matter is that
we view it as a problem. It's not," said the Mexican actor, who
had his own visa troubles getting to the Toronto film festival
for the movie premiere. "Immigration is something that has
happened since humanity began."
Europe is struggling to deal with its biggest migrant crisis
since World War Two amid harrowing images of drowned children
and the rise of anti-immigration populists. Meanwhile front
running U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump proposes mass
deportations and a wall to stem the flow across its southern
border.
"There is a discourse of hate," García Bernal said of the
debates about securing borders and cracking down on undocumented
workers.
In "Desierto" (Desert), his character Moises faces the
personification of that hate in murderous vigilante Sam, played
by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who whittles down a group of people
seeking to cross the border with the help of a long-range rifle
and a ferocious dog.
"This is what happens when somebody validates that conversation,
that discourse," García Bernal said. "That's how genocide
begins, that's how civil wars start, by validating that
ignorant, repulsive, bigoted discourse."
García Bernal has traveled this path before, following a typical
migrant route from central America to the United States in the
2013 documentary "Who Is Dayani Cristal?" while seeking the
identity of an anonymous man found dead in the Arizona desert.
Director Jonás Cuarón said he stripped Moises, Sam and the other
travelers of a back story in order to focus attention on the
perilous journey across an unforgiving landscape.
"The desert doesn't have those biases that we have," he said.
"To him everyone is the same.
"It's beautiful but also doesn't care about either of the
characters, they're all the same, they're stripped down and
brought down to their most human level," he said of the desert.
(Reporting by Alastair Sharp; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Nick
Zieminski)
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