About the Film – Short

In 2011, the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner (OME) recovered 184 dead migrants from southern Arizona’s Sonoran Desert. Dead in the Desert takes you into the Pima County OME, as medical investigators attempt to identify and repatriate the bodies of two migrants found in the Sonoran Desert on June 26, 2011.

The documentary travels to migrant shelters and Santa Muerte shrines along the Arizona-Sonora border; to a northern Mexico town whose economy depends on migration; and ride along with a humanitarian aid organization that maintains water stations in the desert for crossing migrants.

Experience how migrants prepare and cross the Sonoran Desert into the United States, and what happens to the unfortunate ones who don’t make it.