Political Asylum in the United States:
Who deserves it? Who gets it? Who decides?
“Groundbreaking, as well as devastating.... If it's life-and-death drama you're looking for, with entire futures hinging on a few words, this is the place to go.”
-Kenneth Turan, LOS ANGELES TIMES
“One of the most talked-about and attended films at the Sundance Film Festival ... we’re taken behind the bulletproof glass, through the locked doors, under the flourescent glare, down the forbidding hallways, and into the offices of the INS agents themselves.”
-Duane Byrge, THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
"A compassionate but shocking portrait of the way a nation of immigrants defines its human-rights obligations … In a film marked by exquisite production values and striking intelligence, the filmmakers have dedicated themselves to an evenhanded empathy and critique of officials and refugees alike.
– Rebecca Yeldham, SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL.
“A hit at this year’s Sundance Festival ... deftly sidesteps tedious conventions ... If you’re expecting an earnest, dull treatise on immigration law, don’t get too comfortable ... This is a place where people are cut open, not with scalpels, but with questions. .”
- Sarah Goodyear, TIME OUT NEW YORK
Imagine that your life has fallen apart -- something terrible has happened and you’ve lost every material possession, you’ve been tortured or seriously hurt, or maybe you’ve gotten out just in time. You’ve said goodbye to the people you love and now you find yourself faced with the barest possibility of a new start, a glimmer of hope that you can begin a new life in a strange new place in relative safety. Your papers have been submitted, your file is being processed, and now here is your chance. You will enter a small, fluorescent-lit office where you will have one hour to tell your story to a neutral bureaucrat. Two weeks later you will return to pick up a paper. This page will tell you your fate.
Now imagine yourself on the other side of the desk, in the small bright office. You have a good, steady job. You come to work every morning and you have no idea who you’ll meet because a computer assigns cases at random. You walk out into the waiting room and call someone’s name -- a name from any one of a hundred countries. Each person comes to tell you a story. Sometimes a lawyer or a translator is there. You have listened to blood-curdling details, you have seen a lot of confusion, and you have heard many lies. In the afternoon you have an additional 90 minutes to research and to write up a defense of your decision. Your job is to convince your supervisor that each person deserves one of two things -- to be invited to stay here in safety, or to be deported.
There is no recommendation in between.
Well-Founded Fear is a documentary about what goes on behind the electronic doors of the asylum office, the dramatic real-life stage where the human rights ideals of a privileged country collide with the nearly impossible task of trying to know the truth. It is an intimate world never before seen on screen -- asylum officers, lawyers, translators, economic migrants, legitimate refugees looking for protection, all focused on the confidential interviews that are the heart of the asylum process.
With once-in-a lifetime access never before granted to any outsiders, Well-Founded Fear enters the closed corridors of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service for an extraordinary close-up look at what has been called “the Ellis Island of the 21st Century”.
WELL-FOUNDED FEAR premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2000, and opened the season on PBS' distinguished POV series, followed by wide broadcast on CNN and CNN International.
The film continues in high demand by universities, law schools, legal firms and immigration clinics all over the world. The UNHCR calls it “invaluable”. A mainstay in the training of US Asylum Officers, the film is used frequently as a reference by Immigration Court judges and members of the US Congress.
After the tremendous response to the film’s launch and in light of its wide continuing use by immigration law practitioners, the filmmakers produced Tales from Real Life (80 minutes) and Practicing Asylum Law (95 minutes) to offer further insight into the US asylum process. Both titles are available with links above, free for viewing on this website.