VENICE, Italy—Immigration is out of control. That’s a common talking point all over the world. The immigration crisis has become one of the hot-button issues of our time, one that just about everyone has a strong opinion of. In the Trump administration, the solution was a radical new policy to curb immigration and end catch and release: forcefully separating parents from their children at the border. The decision was made to act as a deterrent, but can you ever deter an utterly desperate person?
That policymaking is at the center of Errol Morris’ Separated, a haunting and highly engaging exploration of the crisis that just premiered at the Venice Film Festival. Morris takes experts including former employees of the Office for Refugee Resettlement (ORR)—an organization you’d be forgiven if you’ve never heard of—and creates an urgent portrait of one of the darkest moments in American history; while it covers how the separation came to fruition and why people will still risk everything to come to America (“Somehow that journey was less of a threat than the gangs trying to recruit them,” one OFRR worker claims), it’s largely focused on the bureaucracy of putting separation into action, and the efforts to overturn it.
That may sound dull—if bureaucracy has a reputation for anything, it’s not entertainment—but Morris employs every dramatic trick in his arsenal to heighten the impact of Separated. The dramatization is the most successful of his tools; following the story of a young Guatemalan boy and his mother as they take on the treacherous journey to America is riveting. It captures both the extraordinary physical challenge of traveling that distance and the mental distress that comes with such an undertaking. It also highlights the traumatic experience of the separation itself, revealing without feeling too heavy-handed how such a barbaric practice impacts children, and how these separations have irrevocable consequences.
