Film still from The In Between
Following the death of one of her brothers, filmmaker Robie Flores returns to her hometown, Eagle Pass, on the Texas/Mexico border, wanting to turn back time. She collides with unruly experiences of adolescence that invite her to soak up the details of the home her late brother adored, and she ignored. A playful dance emerges between the personal and collective in her resulting coming-of-age portrait, The In Between, which features kids on the border and Flores herself. In the film, Flores rediscovers the possibilities of joy in the aftermath of grief while offering a nuanced and unexpected picture of the border. The In Between premiered February 10, 2025, on Independent Lens.
In this interview, director Robie Flores and producer Alejandro J Flores, who are also siblings, share their experiences growing up on the U.S.-Mexico border and the complexities of their identities. They emphasize the need to break away from common stereotypes surrounding the border and offer a more nuanced understanding of this complex issue. The importance of family and sibling relationships is highlighted, and how grief can be a transformative experience that helps people appreciate life even more. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Catalina Combs: How did this film come to be?
Robie Flores: In the beginning, I came back home and wanted to make a movie about what it looks like to grow up there and what the border looks like through the eyes of the people living there. I was filming with the mayors of Eagle Pass and Piedras [Negras], and I wanted to mirror both in a Tale of Two Cities way. Show the counterparts. These two places are so similar, like sister cities. I was filming with people on both sides.
But then, watching it as a movie, or whatever I was trying to make, was so boring, and no one cared. It wasn’t until later that I filmed with my niece, Nora. I followed her to the Friendship Festival to see Eagle Pass again through her eyes. I was really inspired by The Florida Project. Then I started letting myself focus on that instead of trying to equally portray both sides because, at that point, I was still trying to prove this lifelong struggle of how Mexican you are, how American you are, but mostly how Mexican you are because it’s cooler to be Mexican on the border.
Alejandro Flores: Everybody’s Mexican. It doesn’t matter on which side because the border crossed us. So what is the thing that separates you from everybody else? It’s things like class, financial situation, or proximity to your Mexican identity. The social hierarchy is that the better you can speak Spanish or the better your slang is, the cooler you are and the more Mexican you are.
RF: I filmed kids with an experience similar to ours, the ones on the American side who have ties to both, and their lives spread over both. It was also this personal healing process for me in that way of calming the ansiedad, the anxiety that I have about my identity and fitting in, which I still have and was trying to prove.
CC: How did you come up with the title The In Between?
RF: I had the title in my head for months before I filmed anything. I was crossing the bridge with my mom on a trip back home and waiting in line on the bridge. You’ll spend so much time just in line, so I was thinking about that and all the time that we would spend there as kids and this in-between space. Then, being in between these two cultures constantly, not being from here nor there, and between two languages, two identities, and all that stuff. I was fascinated with that nebulous gray space that encompasses all of that mentally, emotionally, and physically. Even in the grief process of this in-between space of the past, present, and future.
Our society always wants to categorize everything and put everything in this box. But it’s such a nuanced landscape, space, experience, culture, and identity.
CC: You mentioned this started as a border project. What was that switch like for you when you realized it was something more?
RF: It’s so funny because it started as a sort of anti-border film, the antithesis of the typical border narrative. It’s 2016, so it was that election cycle, and the border was the token topic. Those politicians’ soundbites were replaying over and over, and I’m just like, they make it sound like an action movie down there. It’s not. There’s not much action. It’s really boring. I wanted to make something to show them. I was going to go back home for three months, a kind of quick film, and come back and have my feature.
Then, being there, I realized that I’m doing what these news journalists are doing. I’m the outsider coming in and trying to get the story and ambulance chase in my own home.
Our experience down there is the border is the backdrop to a beautiful bicultural, bilingual sister city. We don’t talk about everything that everybody talks about with the border. The river is just there. The bit of fence that’s the wall is just there. It’s not blocking anything. The CBP and Border Patrol are just there. We’re all in our bubble. This is very specific to Texas and Mexico, but also Eagle Pass and Piedras, because all the borders are different.
CC: Robie, at one point in the film, you realize that Alex should be helping you make this film. Why?
RF: That was when it was still part of the border story. Alex would just come by and have lunch at my mom’s house and come and hang out and ask how it’s going, and I’d always complain. He’d be hanging out with his guitar and start making songs about all the things that I was telling him. It was then that I was like, come and help me make this movie.
Our older brother was the first filmmaker in the family. He paved the way for us and showed us it could be done. He made a movie with his friends at 19 not knowing anything, not having any formal training, and my mom supported him. They sold it and went to Latino film festivals. TWe always had this dream of making a sibling production company making movies together. But then, you know, we all grew up, everybody went their own directions, and Mars died. Mars had gone to film school here, but I didn’t think that was possible anymore.
CC: Alex, What was going through your mind when Robie asked you?
AF: I was making a lot of money, but I was not happy. I remember thinking, I wish I could be surrounded by people who are inspired by what they’re doing and who inspire me. Robie called, and it was like she was giving me permission to immediately, completely change course. Mars had passed two years before. I had left so far from the family initially to get away from knowing people, and having to talk about loss and grief. After a while, I realized this was worse. I’d rather be surrounded by people who know who I am, and know my family, and my history. She made it really easy for me because she had already started and been working on it for a year.
RF: I think we still got to do the movie with Mars. That final shot in the credits was this shot that we attempted for four years. Eagle Pass throws a Fourth of July celebration on the riverbanks under the bridge. Everybody in Piedras comes out to the RiverwalkThey’re all celebrating under the same sky, and the river’s uniting them. It’s so amazing to see. We wanted to film this beautiful bridge panoramic view of this community and how connected and interlaced it is. Every year, something was wrong.
This last year, I was like, “Okay, we have to get it because we can’t do this every year.” I was on the bridge with my good friend Zac Manuel, who was doing the shot, and then Alex planted some people to walk around. Alex coordinated with everybody in Piedras, and our older brother coordinated with everybody down in Eagle Pass. On the bridge, I was like, “Mars, you gotta give us the best sky!” Then there was the most insanely magical amazing sky, we all got chills and were all on walkie-talkies like, “Do you guys see this?” We were all crying, and it was like we did it, and we all did it together.
CC: It seems very intentional that you didn’t reveal how your brother passed. Can you talk about why you chose that direction?
AF: In the film, whenever Robie’s going through his journal, she alludes to this. She says that she hasn’t gone through it in so many years because she still wants to have something left to explore and discover. I think not to share these very personal and intimate parts of our story is to still have something for us to continue exploring and discovering. It’s not for the world to discuss like dialogue.
RF: In this era of murder mystery documentaries, and like scam documentaries, and sensationalizing these horrible parts, experiences of people’s lives, like any loss, however, may have been so terrible, and it doesn’t mirror our experience. It sort of mirrored my grief process. In the beginning, I wanted to hold on to the last days I was with Mars. I’d hold on to my death pain a lot, the grief that I felt, because that was closer to the last time we saw each other. My therapist told me, “With everything you’re telling me about him, it doesn’t sound or feel like you’re trying to stay close to him by holding on to pain…You’ll be closer to him by focusing your energy and attention on what he was like and how he made you feel.”
The sadness will come, but this cathartic and beautiful sadness is attached to his memory, personality, and identity. What he’s done for us and what he’s given us. So yeah, it was very intentional. We wanted to focus on his life and our life as he continues to inspire us, love us, and hold us.
The In Between is available to stream on the PBS app or PBS.org.