In 2009, I got calls and emails from a Belgian filmmaker who had spent a couple of hours interviewing Shawna Forde in October 2008, about seven months before she murdered Brisenia Flores and her father Raul.
This is a common experience for writers in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Europeans, Asians, Canadians — people from everywhere sweep through the area seeking the border story and sometimes ask for help.
Sébastien Wielemans wanted to take the little material he had shot with Forde before her arrest and combine it with new material he would search out after her arrest. In 2010, he came back and tracked down Forde's friends and family members, in Arizona, California and Washington. He also maintained a written correspondence with Forde that he draws on in the film.
What he's produced is a surprisingly profound, profoundly sad 50-minute video on Forde and her family. The movie is not about the murders per se, and it does not focus much on the victims. Some viewers may not like that. But I think it does a great job explaining in an oblique way how we got here, to the May 30, 2009 murders and their aftermath. It does so with beautiful landscape videography that creates a dream-like atmosphere that deepens as the film goes on.
Sébastien clarifies in the film, which is in English but subtitled in French and Flemish, both Forde's attractiveness to some supporters and the fundamental flaws that drove away many of the people who knew her and apparently led to murder. He even quotes from a jailhouse letter in which Forde makes a surprising acknowledgement.
"Although I never thought of a home invasion, I knew it was a high-risk challenge and my imprisonment could happen," he quotes her as writing.
You can see the video, A cycle of fences from Sebastien Wielemans on Vimeo.
