Based on an actual incident in Texas in 1901, The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez is on its surface a western chase narrative – a man on the run, various posses vying to capture or kill him. But its true subject is racism and the way it permeated (and still permeates) American society. Texas, taken from Mexico in war, contained two cultures not simply side-by-side, but inextricably woven together. The Mexican farmers working the land were looked down on contemptuously by their white American neighbours (…). The brutality of the white pursuers is rooted in their reflexive sense of their own superiority, of their contempt for those they consider less than (…). In theme and technique, the film feels completely undated; in fact, it takes on a new sense of urgency given the current political climate in the States, with its reminder that Mexicans are not alien to the country but rather have been a part of the cultural fabric for a long time – in fact, the U.S. took large swaths of land from them, just as it did from Native Americans. The current widespread hostility to “immigrants” is rooted in the same arrogance combined with fear which motivated the events depicted in the film. — Kenneth George Godwin