In the Pit

In 2003, Mexico City undertook an enormous infrastructure project to alleviate traffic in the Financial District. The recently completed El Periferico project, an elevated freeway traversing much of the city, employed thousands of poor laborers from divergent backgrounds for dangerous, low-paying jobs. These workers are the subjects of Juan Carlos Rulfo’s meandering documentary In the Pit, which continually introduces potentially interesting characters without ever bothering to scratch their surfaces. In the Pit may struggle on a human level, but it does feature some beautiful photography of the elevated freeway’s painstaking construction, including a breathtaking 7-minute closing shot that tracks over the entirety of the project, which at the time lay in various stages of completion.