Bordertown is a 2007 American drama film written and directed by Gregory Nava, and starring Jennifer Lopez (who also served as a producer), Martin Sheen, Maya Zapata, Sônia Braga and Antonio Banderas. The film is inspired by the true story of the numerous female homicides in Ciudad Juárez and tells the story of an inquisitive American reporter sent in by her American newspaper to investigate the murders. Lopez also recorded a song for the film entitled Porque La Vida Es Asi. Plot The opening titles explain that American corporations are using the North American Free Trade Agreement by opening large maquiladoras right across the United States–Mexico border. The maquiladoras hire mostly Mexican women to work long hours for little money in order to produce mass quantity products. Lauren Adrian (Jennifer Lopez), an impassioned American news reporter for the Chicago Sentinel wants to be assigned to the Iraq front-lines to cover the war. Instead, her editor George Morgan (Martin Sheen) assigns her to investigate a series of slayings involving young maquiladora factory women in a Mexican bordertown. Worker Eva (Maya Zapata), originally from the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, takes a bus to go back to her shanty-town home after work. After a while she is the last passenger still in the bus. The driver asks her if she minds if he goes to a gas station to fill up, and Eva agrees. However, he takes her to a remote place and assaults and rapes her, together with another man, who then tries to strangle her. The two men, believing she's dead, bury her alive. With the little energy she has left, Eva escapes. Adrian heads to Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, on the U.S.–Mexico border to investigate the murders, hoping that if she does well she will be promoted by Morgan to be a foreign correspondent. In Juárez, Adrian meets up with Diaz (Antonio Banderas), whom she had been working with six years before, and who is now the editor for the local newspaper El Sol de Juárez. She also meets Eva. The three try to find the two killers and have them prosecuted. For this purpose Adrian starts working in the factory in order to act as bait on the bus ride. The driver tries to assault her in the same way he did Eva, and although police assistance has been arranged, they are at the wrong place. She manages to