Filmmaker addresses response to ‘Immigration Nation’
Growing up in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, gave Christina Clusiau a fairly isolated view of the world. The filmmaker is now making up for lost opportunities.
Netflix’s “Immigration Nation” explores the current state of American immigration, a mission that sent C lu si au and her co-director Shaul Schwarz scrambling tolocations across the hemisphere, including El Paso, Texas; PanamaCity, Florida; and Guatemala.
“Coming froma place without a lot of diversitymademe curious about understanding and diving intoworlds I didn’t know much about,” Clusiau said this month by phone from her home in New York.
What separates their sixpart series from other documentaries on the same subject is how it tackles the hotbuttonissue fromvarious perspectives, notably ones from employeesofU.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Since the project debuted this month, much has been made of scenes in which certain agents round up people living in theU.S. illegallywith the glee of cowboys roping up stray cattle. But the directors also spotlight agentswho show compassion for those being arrested.
The team’s requests to be embeddedwith ICE date back to the O ba ma administration, which turnedthemdown. But the directorswere pleasantly surprised to get the greenlight shortly after President Donald Trump came into office.
“I think they wanted to showhowunique and incredible these peoplewere,” said Schwarz, who is engaged to Clusiau. “Never in a million years did I think itwouldwind up being so intense.”
The administration appears to have regretted its decision. In July, ICE officials tried unsuccessful ly to block the film’s release until after the presidential election.
“The men and women of ICE perform outstanding work daily that often goes unnoticed or is misrepresented to the point of falsehood,” ICE press secretary Jenny Burke wrote in a public statement.
Schwarz admits he was “somewhat slightly surprised” by the amount of anger that has comefromcertain ICE agents.
“But that’s OK,” he said. “I do hope viewers remember that they have a very difficult job. Any policing is a hardjob, but especially one that had to shift soquickly under political pressure. Are there ICE officers that tookthe temperature of the country and got more emboldened? Absolutely. Is that all ICE is? No. There are a lot of good officers there.”
The controversy has given the film tons of free publicity, but it also threatens to downplay “Nation’s” other powerful moments.
Human toll
There are several harrowing scenes of parents being separated from their children at detention centers. Anex-Marine, deported after being convicted of a minor crime, pleads his case to a court clerk through tears. A businessman takes advantage ofworkers without legal status by refusing to pay for their work.
“There’s the initial shock of seeing how ICE operates ,” said Clusiau, who dedicated three years to the project. “But our hope is, in the long run, people will also be drawn to the stories of the human toll on individuals.”
Clusiau, a former Time magazine photojournalist, is no stranger to tackling controversial issues.
“Trophy,” the 2017 film she also co-directed with S ch warz, took an unflinching look at big-game hunting and conservation.
But “Nation” may end up being the most buzzed-about project of their careers.
“We’re really amazed by the reach the series has had across the board,” Clusiau said. “There’s been a little bit of anger, butwe’ve also seen a lot of organizations and people reaching out to offer support. It’s a hard series to watch, but hopefully it becomes a vehicle for change.”