Poynter: Separated: A film screening and conversation with Jacob Soboroff and Lee Gelernt

This event will feature a screening of the new film Separated by Oscar winner Errol Morris, which documents the systematic separation of migrant families at the hands of the U.S. government. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Poynter Fellow and Executive Producer Jacob Soboroff (NBC News Political and National Correspondent) and Lee Gelernt (Deputy Director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project) moderated by Professor Dylan Gee (Psychology).

Synopsis: Academy Award®-winning filmmaker Errol Morris confronts one of the darkest chapters in recent American history: family separations. Based on NBC News Political and National Correspondent Jacob Soboroff’s book, Separated: Inside an American Tragedy, Morris merges bombshell interviews with government officials and artful narrative vignettes tracing one migrant family’s plight. Together they show that the cruelty at the heart of this policy was its very purpose. Against this backdrop, audiences can begin to absorb the U.S. government’s role in developing and implementing policies that have kept over 1300 children without confirmed reunifications years later, according to the Department of Homeland Security.