A personal look at immigration nightmare

Bay Area filmmaker Richard Levien didn’t have to search far for the inspiration for “Collisions,” his heralded immigrationthemed film that opens in San Francisco and Berkeley this week. “When I began work on the script,” Levien says in a statement, “my wife was a third grade teacher, and a child in her class recently had her father taken away and deported. It took weeks of building trust to find out why this girl, previously bright and engaged in class, was suddenly listless and prone to anger or tears at the slightest provocation. I interviewed her as part of my research. Her sadness, but also her bravery, hit me in the gut in a way that no headline or statistic ever could.” The San Francisco-set film “Collisions” centers on a 12-year-old girl, Itan, who returns from school one day to find her home in disarray and her mother missing. After learning her mother has been detained in an ICE raid, she and her younger brother are placed with an estranged uncle, with whom they have a troubled relationship, at best. The film follows the trio as they try to locate Itan’s mother in an Arizona detention center. “Collisions” has garnered 13 film festival awards, including the audience award at the 2018Mill Valley Film Festival and a best narrative feature award at the SF Indie Fest earlier this year. “The policies of U.S. President Trump constantly thrust immigration into the headlines,” says Levien, a New Zealand native who now lives in San Francisco’s Mission District. “but there is not so much media attention given to the real families affected by these policies.” Details: Opens Friday at Rialto Cinemas Elmwood in Berkeley (details to come at www.rialtocinemas.com); and at the Roxie theater, San Francisco; $8-13; www.roxie. com.