Reel Borders uses participatory filmmaking as one of its core methodologies, led by Irene Gutiérrez-Torres. Participatory Filmmaking (PF), also known as Participatory Video (PV), refers to a set of methods and techniques through which a group or community becomes actively involved in shaping, producing and circulating their own films. It forms part of a broader family of participatory visual arts methods, with roots in pioneer experiences of citizen engagement through cinema, from the Film-Eye movement in the 1920s to the Fogo Process in the 1960s.

Our empirical research draws on three PF workshops held on the Irish border, the Ceuta exclave at the Moroccan-Spanish border, and the Turkish city of Adana, near the Syrian border. Across these sites, Reel Borders explores both the potentials and challenges of PF in border and migration research, asking how participatory film practices can open safe spaces for situated knowledge and alternative ways of seeing and narrating borders.