Oscar-winning US director Laura Poitras doesn’t seem surprised at the horrific events that are chronicled in her new short documentary They’re Here (co-directed by Rachel Lauren Mueller). The 25-minute film, which started shooting in January this year, shows ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents terrorising the residents of Minneapolis. Masked men in big SUVs prowl around the city in the dead of winter, looking for people they can abduct, throw in jails and then whisk out of the country.
“This is the reality of the United States right now. There is a constant menace – the danger of paramilitary armed militias jumping out and abducting people in front of you, right in front of your eyes,” Poitras declares. “It is the reality,” she repeats. “If you want to do a deep dive into American history, this is a country founded on indigenous genocide. It’s not that new.”
Poitras believes that the “news cycle” will often “normalise violence.” That’s why They’re Here deliberately uses the extreme rhetoric of horror and sci-fi movies to show just shocking ICE behaviour really is. World sales for the film are handled by Josh Braun at Submarine.
Co-director Mueller lives in South Minneapolis just a few blocks from where 37-year-old Renée Good was killed in her car by an ICE agent on January 7. “That was very much a centre point for a lot of ICE actions. It was very clear to me from the beginning what my role was in this moment – and that was as a filmmaker. I am also a cinematographer and I have a camera, so I was able to go out every single day and start shooting,” she tells BDE.
When ICE was on the prowl, she would often hear whistle sounds. That was the indication that it wasn’t safe – “a warning to immigrant people to stay inside your house and don’t go outside.”
“During that time, I would wake up to that sound and so you know there a masked, paramilitary organisation is right outside your door. That is not something I ever imagined.”
Poitras dismisses the very notion of “American exceptionalism,” the longstanding idea that the US is somehow morally superior to other countries. “It is not true,” she states categorically. “It’s a fiction. It [the US] is a country that has violence at its core; it has empire at its core, and it is engaging in violence [all the time]. How many wars have we started…but having paramilitary troops running around is if course terrifying!”
Mueller was brought together with Poitras through a close mutual friend, Adam Mellion, who also lives in South Minneapolis, and who has worked as a researcher on Poitras’s award-winning films All the Beauty and the Bloodshed and Cover Up. “He put us in touch and we were able to hit the ground running.”
One positive side of the film is the mass community resistance against the ICE agents. “The organising effort that was happening was totally organic. There was no leader. It made sense for us to be asking every single person that we were talking with ‘do you have footage’ because probably they did,” Mueller notes. Much of that footage was then incorporated into the documentary.
The two directors took exhaustive measures to protect the identities of all their sources. The film includes narration from Edén Villa (a pseudonym), who is trying to stay out of ICE’s clutches, and commentary from anonymous Minneapolis residents as they struggle to cope with the hostile invaders who’ve suddenly arrived in their backyard.
Local activists are clearly under a very real threat. In late January, 15 members and associates of Direct Action Minnesota suddenly found themselves facing criminal charges. Journalists have also faced blowback from the Trump administration and the directors acknowledge that they could be at risk themselves.
Poitras and Mueller had a researcher who went to the airport every morning to track the ICE flights that were leaving from Minneapolis. Using his data and extra information from agency Human Rights First, the filmmakers crested a map which showed the huge numbers of abductions that were taking place on a daily basis.
“The scale of the violence was so extreme and we also wanted to communicate the scale,” Poitras observes.
“ICE has a record number of abductions over the last two months but they are so much more covert,” Mueller points out that, partly thanks to the huge opposition they faced in Minneapolis, the immigration agents are now very wary about operating in plain sight.
Poitras edited the movie alongside Adriana Pacheco. “I made one trip there [to Minneapolis] but Rachel was on the ground, living in this occupation. The morning that Alex Pretti (an intensive care nurse) was executed – the second protester that was killed – Rachel and Adam called me and we just said we need to film today – we knew very well that this was going to be a moment in American history that was not forgotten.”
Grant money enabled the filmmakers to put together a first cut quickly and then ARTE France came on board. “I know it is different in Europe, but it is very common for a documentary to be in production before it gets any money at all,” Mueller points out.
“And we knew it had to be filmed then,” Poitras adds. “We knew we couldn’t be sitting round writing grant applications when all this was happening.”
This may be a short but both directors “consider it cinema” and express their pride that it is screening at festivals like Venice and New York.
There have already been “feedback screenings” in Minneapolis with everybody who features in it. “The atmosphere in those rooms was really intense. When we turned the lights on, everyone was in tears, crying. They said ‘this is what it felt like. You nailed it.’”
An impact campaign is being planned to support the US release. There will also be a series of community screenings across the country.
As for Poitras, she will “keep on making films about resistance…it does matter and it does make a difference and change social reality. The progress the country has made has come because people demanded it, not because it was given.”
