Shot in the Mexican coastline, much more similar to the Sicily of 1944 than the Sicily of 1968, these images portray the coastline and wildlife of the Sea of Cortez as it stood on the brink between isolation and urban development. Broomberg and Chanarin have re-edited material from this seminal fiction film set in Italy during WWII, transforming it into a nature documentary set in 1968 in Mexico—evidence of a pristine landscape that no longer exists.

Further research into the production of the film revealed that one of the eighteen planes used in the movie—the largest fleet of B-25s ever assembled since WWII—had been buried on set. Broomberg and Chanarin set out to find “the Mexican plane” and headed to San Carlos, on the outskirts of Guaymas, with an archeological expedition from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México to exhume it. But that’s not what they found.