A group of undocumented activists - Dreamers - deliberately get detained by Border Patrol in order to infiltrate a shadowy, for-profit detention center.
ABOUT
THE INFILTRATORS is a docu-thriller that tells the true story of young immigrants who get arrested by Border Patrol, and put in a shadowy for-profit detention center – on purpose. Marco and Viri are members of the National Immigrant Youth Alliance, a group of radical Dreamers who are on a mission to stop deportations. And the best place to stop deportations, they believe, is in detention. However, when Marco and Viri try to pull off their heist – a kind of ‘prison break’ in reverse – things don’t go according to plan.
By weaving together documentary footage of the real infiltrators with scripted re-enactments of the events inside the detention center, THE INFILTRATORS tells this incredible true story in a boundary-crossing new cinematic language. The Hollywood Reporter said of the multiple award-winning film “watching it is a thrill.”
CREATIVE TEAM
Alex Rivera
Director, Writer, Producer
Alex Rivera is an award-winning filmmaker with more than 25 years of experience directing and producing documentaries, scripted feature films, and new media, which explores themes of globalization, migration and technology. His credits include the visionary sci-fi film “Sleep Dealer” and the docu-thriller “The Infiltrators”. Rivera has guest lectured at 40 colleges and universities, speaks at conferences and serves on film juries. Rivera’s work is supported by the Ford Foundation, Creative Capital, and the Open Society Institute. Rivera is an associate professor in The Sidney Poitier New American Film School. He is a 2021 MacArthur Fellow.
Cristina Ibarra is a Sundance award-winning filmmaker whose work explores life in the U.S.–Mexico borderlands through a deeply place-based lens. For over twenty-five years, she has crafted hybrid documentary films rooted in the landscapes, institutions, and everyday spaces that shape border communities. Her feature documentary Las Marthas, about a Mexican-American debutante tradition in South Texas, aired nationally on PBS’s Independent Lens. She later co-directed the docu-thriller The Infiltrators, which premiered at Sundance and broadcast on PBS’s acclaimed series POV. Across her films, Ibarra explores how borders—geographic, political, and cultural—are lived on the ground. Ibarra is the recipient of fellowships from the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, Firelight Media, and Creative Capital. She is an Associate Professor in The Sidney Poitier New American Film School and a 2021 MacArthur Fellow.
The Infiltrators premiered in the NEXT Section of the 2019 Sundance Film Festival and received the NEXT Innovator Award and the Best of NEXT! Audience Award.
“Ibarra and Rivera maintain an effortless balance between genre-rooted entertainment and concern for real human suffering.”
“A fascinating experiment in nonfiction storytelling…it’s impossible to look away from ‘The Infiltrators,’ due to the sheer audacity of the activists.”
“The Infiltrators manages to personalize the undocumented struggle by transforming it into an unlikely blend of activism and suspense that makes for a compelling case for the abolishment of ICE.”
“This invaluable film gives an unforgettable face to people who for years have been hiding quietly and productively in plain sight — in our neighborhoods, offices, restaurants and classrooms.”
