The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (also known as Three Burials) is a 2005 Gothic neo-Western film directed by and starring Tommy Lee Jones and written by Guillermo Arriaga. It also stars Barry Pepper, Julio Cedillo, Dwight Yoakam, and January Jones.
The film was inspired by the real-life killing in Texas of a teenager, Esequiel Hernandez Jr, by United States Marines during a military operation near the United States–Mexico border as well as the novel As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, which contains the same plot premise and challenges encountered in the film. The film has many flashbacks with the same event shown from different perspectives.
Melquiades Estrada, a Mexican illegal immigrant working in Texas as a cowboy, shoots at a coyote which is menacing his small flock of goats. A nearby United States Border Patrol officer, Mike Norton, thinks he is being attacked and shoots, killing Melquiades. Norton buries Melquiades and does not report anything about the event. Melquiades’ body is found and is reburied in a local cemetery by the sheriff’s office. Evidence that he may have been killed by Border Patrol is ignored by the local sheriff, Frank Belmont.
The film was an international co-production film between France, the United States and Mexico. Filming locations in Texas included Big Bend National Park, Big Bend Ranch State Park, Lajitas, Midland, Monahans, Odessa, Van Horn, and Redford.
