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The Infiltrators Details
- Year of Production: 2019
- Length: 95 minutes
- Color: Color
- Screening Format: Digital
- Language: English and Spanish with English subtitles
About the Film
“Without warning, Claudio Rojas is detained by ICE officials outside his Florida home. He is transferred to the Broward Transitional Center, a detention facility used as a holding space for imminent deportations. Terrified of never seeing him again, Claudio’s family contacts the National Immigrant Youth Alliance (NIYA), a group of activist Dreamers known for stopping deportations. Believing that no one is free as long as one is in detention, NIYA enlists Marco Saavedra to self-deport with the hopes of gaining access to the detention center and impeding Claudio’s expulsion. Once inside, Marco discovers a complex for-profit institution housing hundreds of multinational immigrants, all imprisoned without trial.
Directors Cristina Ibarra (in her Sundance debut) and Alex Rivera (Sleep Dealer, 2008 Sundance Film Festival) design a hybrid cinematic language, combining familiar documentary form and scripted narrative to map an uncharted domain: inside an Obama-era immigration detention system. Based on true events, The Infiltrators is both a suspenseful account of a high-stakes mission and an emotionally charged portrait of visionary youth fighting for their community.” – Sundance Film Festival
“Directors Cristina Ibarra and Alex Rivera create a hybrid work that is equal parts journalistic exposé and taut drama, and one hundred percent cinema.” – Christopher Llewellyn Reed, Hammer to Nail
Winner of the Audience Award and the NEXT Innovator Award at the Sundance Film Festival. Winner of the Rogue Award at the Ashland Independent Film Festival. World Premiere at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Official Selection of the SXSW Film Festival, BlackStar Film Festival, Montclair Film Festival and BAMcinemaFest
About the Filmmakers
Cristina Ibarra Director/Writer
Cristina Ibarra has been making award-winning films for PBS that explore the US-Mexico border for the past sixteen years. Her most recent documentary, Las Marthas, premiered on Independent Lens in 2014. The New York Times called it “a striking alternative portrait of border life”. Her PBS documentary collaboration, The Last Conquistador, had a national broadcast […] Read More
Alex Rivera Director/Writer
Alex Rivera is a filmmaker who, for the past twenty years, has been telling new, urgent, and visually adventurous Latino stories. His first feature film, Sleep Dealer, a science-fiction feature set on the U.S./Mexico border, won awards at the Sundance Film Festival and the Berlin International Film Festival, was screened at the Museum of Modern […] Read More
