The border fence between Mexico and the United States is part of their lives; Mexican youths use it as a volleyball net on the beach, holding their own kind of international matches with their opposite numbers on the other side. When Nero scales the metres-high metal bars we suspect that he has done this often before: because nothing is going to divert him from his dream of becoming a US citizen. He follows the traces of his older brother which lead him to Los Angeles and the mansions of the rich and famous where he gazes incredulously at this very different lifestyle with its pools and double garages that he soon hopes will be his.
Pitts was born in 1967 in Mashad, Iran and spent his childhood in Tehran where he lived in a basement flat underneath a post-production studio. He describes himself as having been a ‚very bad‘ child actor, starting in films at the age of eight. In 1996 he had the opportunity to film in Iran and describes himself as having been the first film director (in exile) to do so since the Revolution in 1979. His first feature Season Five (1997) was the first Franco-Iranian coproduction since the Revolution.In 2006, and 2010 Pitts was nominated for Golden Bear award for respectively for the Winter and the Hunter.
