What is a good alternative to "the film is set in"?

I'm writing a paper about a movie.

I would like to start like this:

Monsters is a 2010 independent science-fiction film directed by Gareth Edwards and set in the Mexico-U.S. border region. It is set in the present; however, a significant event has changed human history six years before ....

I would like to avoid duplicating "set", but I can't think of a good alternative. The thesaurus isn't helpful because it doesn't seem to cover the case of "to be set", at least dictionary.com's doesn't.

What are good alternatives here? I'll restructure the sentences if none exists, but I thought I'd ask first.

Solution 1:

The film takes place in the present.

Solution 2:

• about X in the Mexico-U.S. border region
• which takes place in the Mexico-U.S. border region

Perhaps you could reword along the lines of

Monsters is a 2010 independent science-fiction film directed by Gareth Edwards. It is set in the present Mexico-U.S. border region; however, a significant event has changed human history six years before ....