There’s an unfortunate truth that the plight of undocumented immigrants in the US is easy to ignore for citizens shielded from its inherent tragedy and persistently manipulated by tired media narratives. Some shortsighted takes on the problem in the documentary space take a liberal slant, playing up the sympathy of kids in cages and families divided, but that doesn’t always engender real investment, just patting selves on the back for accurately identifying injustice.
But The Infiltrators works so well as a documentary by taking a different tack: if anti-immigration folks want to see undocumented individuals as criminals, why not frame their fight for freedom as a crime thriller?
The film follows an Obama-era group of activists comprised entirely by undocumented youth brought together by the Dream Act and their ongoing operation to infiltrate ICE detention centers. Directors Alex Rivera and Cristina Ibarra split the film’s time between actual footage of the real activists with dramatic reenactments of what transpired behind the center walls. Usually, documentaries that heavily rely on scripted, fictional content feel like insecure motion pictures, half measures with little confidence in their subject matter.
But here, leaning into the genre vibe of this true story is a major boon. Were this a wall-to-wall affair full of talking head interviews and long sequences of people talking on phones, the drama of their dangerous undertaking would be completely siphoned out of the proceedings. But here, even the middling quality of the reenactors acting fails to fell how genuinely thrilling this topic can be. It underscores the life or death nature of the cruel deportations this country has been callously carrying out long before Trump moved into the White House.
By framing the double agent machinations inside the detention centers like a heist thriller, the genre pockmarks trigger an unconscious investment into the story that a more staid approach might not be able to muster. It’s somewhat sad, sure, that viewers exist who need to be stylistically hoodwinked into giving a shit about people from other walks of life, but striking up even a casual conversation on the subject in 2020 proves these kind of experimental histrionics are still necessary to make a connection with an audience who somehow require hand holding to arrive at human decency.
Finding a middle ground between the nail-biting anxiety of the detention center drama with the inspiring kinship found among the activists, the filmmakers are able to craft a movie as exciting as it is inspiring. Perhaps even at its most thrilling, The Infiltrators might not change enough hearts or minds to get everyone to stop calling undocumented humans “illegals,” but it’s sure to galvanize other viewers, so that hopefully these activists can continue to strengthen their numbers for the hard work ahead.
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