Events
States of Migration Film Series
The Infiltrators
| Title: |
The Infiltrators |
| Release Date: | 2019 |
| Runtime: | 95 minutes |
| Directors: | Cristina Ibarra and Alex Rivera |
| Languages: | Spanish and English with English subtitles |
| Countries: | United States, Mexico |
| Synopsis: | The Infiltrators is a docu-thriller that tells the true story of young immigrants who are detained by Border Patrol and thrown into a shadowy for-profit detention center—on purpose. Marco and Viri are members of the National Immigrant Youth Alliance, a group of radical DREAMers who are on a mission to stop unjust deportations. And the best place to stop deportations, they believe, is in detention. However, when Marco and Viri attempt a daring reverse ‘prison break,’ things don’t go according to plan. By weaving together documentary footage of the real infiltrators with re-enactments of the events inside the detention center, The Infiltrators tells an incredible and thrilling true story in a genre-defying new cinematic language. |
| Director Bios: | Alex Rivera is an award-winning filmmaker whose work explores themes of globalization, migration, and technology. His first feature, a cyberpunk thriller set in Mexico, Sleep Dealer, won multiple awards at Sundance and Berlin. Rivera's second feature, The Infiltrators, won the NEXT: Audience Award and the Innovator Award at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, was released theatrically in the U.S., and is currently being developed as a scripted series by Blumhouse. Rivera is a 2021 MacArthur Fellow, a Sundance Fellow, and was The Rothschild Lecturer at Harvard University. He studied at Hampshire College and lives in Los Angeles. Cristina Ibarra is a Sundance award-winning filmmaker with a 20-year practice rooted in her border crossing roots along the Texas-Mexico border. Before The Infiltrators, Ibarra's previous award-winning documentary, Las Marthas, about wealthy South Texas border debutantes who honor George Washington in Laredo, premiered on PBS's Independent Lens in 2014 and is distributed by Women Make Movies. The Last Conquistador, a documentary about the racially conflicted construction of a monument to a conquistador in El Paso, Texas, was broadcast on POV in 2008. Her award-winning directorial debut, Dirty Laundry: A Homemade Telenovela, was broadcast on PBS in 2001. She is the recipient of fellowships from Soros, Rauschenberg, Rockefeller, NYFA, CPB/PBS, NALIP, Firelight, the Sundance Women's Initiative and Creative Capita. Ibarra is a 2021 MacArthur Fellow. |