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1 online resource (1 streaming video file (approximately 119 min. 54 sec.) : sound, color
Documentary about the American asylum system that takes viewers within the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) (pre-9/11), where bureaucrats ponder the sometimes life-or-death fate of immigrants seeking asylum. Includes confidential conversations between asylum officers and refugees, plus their translators and lawyers. It is the task of the asylum officer to identify where there exists a "well-founded fear" that an applicant's life may be placed in jeopardy by deportation. But with thousands of applicants, and with the number of fraudulent cases perhaps equaling the number of legitimate cases, the officers acknowledge that truth and justice are elusive and that subjectivity can play a decisive hand in their evaluations. While including horrific testimonials of torture and grievous accounts of loss, the film also demonstrates that the outcome can be impacted by personality and prejudice, by an officer's level of experience (with naiveté easily morphing into cynicism), by the applicant's credibility, and even by an interpreter's translation of a testimony.
Not rated. Has some oral recounting of torture and violence.
a film by Shari Robertson, Michael Camerini.
Title and statement of responsibility from opening credits.
Originally produced as a documentary in 2000. Television broadcast premiere on PBS: in the "P.O.V." (Point of View) series, 2000 June 5.
Some oral translation by the applicants' translators on-screen differs from text of translation in subtitles..
"Every person who agreed to be filmed gave up the protection of ... confidentiality to help tell this story."--Opening credits.
This streaming version lacks special features of some videodiscs such as "The hazards of translation" (outtake).
On-screen participants include asylum seekers Huang Xiang and Yung and Shao Po and Xujing X. (of China), Gjerji C. and Altin (of Albania), Cristian J. and Ana Maria (of Romania), Boris (of Russia), Gladys C. (of El Salvador), Farida (of Algeria), and A. (of Nigeria).
On-screen participants include INS asylum officers and supervisors Charlene C., Ed, Gerald B., Jim, Kevin, Martha-Louise, Rob, Todd, Larry, Marlene A., Peter, and Wally.
On-screen participants also include an attorney (Victoria) and several translators for asylum seekers.
"Edit translators, Arif Amin" and 26 others.--Closing credits.
Also present on-screen are some INS support staff.
Narration and much dialog In English. Some interviewees speak in Albanian, Chinese, French, Russian, or Spanish, and most are supplied orally with contemporaneous approximate translation. All the oral English is also represented in an optional transcript sidebar. The non-English dialog is accompanied by English subtitles.
Produced and directed by Shari Robertson and Michael Camerini ; edited by Karen Schmeer, Christopher Osborn, Suzanne Pancrazi ; camera, Michael Camerini ; music composed and conducted by Mark Suozzo ; sound, John Dildine.
Sundance Film Festival nominee for Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary, 2000.
San Francisco International Film Festival, 2000: Certificate of Merit in Film & Video--Current Events.