Offbeat | The Ross brothers redefine the Western

Documentary directors and brothers Bill and Turner Ross have made a career out of examining microcosms in the modern American landscape, from their first film, “45365,” about their middle-class hometown of Sidney, Ohio, to “Tchoupitoulas,” which follows three young brothers wandering New Orleans at night.
Their latest, “Western,” takes them to a foreign territory: the border.
The film, which picked up a special jury award for verite filmmaking at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, transports the audience to the once harmonious, now violence-plagued border towns of Eagle Pass, Texas, and Piedras Negras, Mexico.
“The Rio Grande is a natural boundary in visualizing the frontier. If you’re talking about something as visual as a film and using landscapes, I think the most iconic way to do that is to see two cities on either side of the river,” Turner Ross said over breakfast at Park City’s High West Distillery & Saloon.
This new frontier is shown through the eyes of cattleman Martin (pronounced “Marteen”) Wall and the longtime mayor Chad Foster, both of whom have had their livelihoods challenged by the increasingly imminent threat of cartel violence.
But it’s not a political movie. “Western” is atmospheric, inventive and immersive.