Oscar-winning documentarian Errol Morris (Fog of War) and acclaimed NBC journalist NBC’s Jacob Soboroff took aim at the immigration policies of the previous administration of Donald Trump in their press conference for Separation at the Venice Film Festival on Thursday.
Morris’ documentary adaptation of Soboroff’s book of the same name looks at the Trump administration’s mandate that ordered the separation of migrant families who crossed the Mexican border into the U.S. Before Trump ended the policy, some 5,500 families had been pulled apart. As depicted in dramatized sequences of the documentary, the hardship endured by the families was, frankly, inhuman, with children taken from their parents, and kept in detention cages. Some were infants.
“The idea that somehow you would hurt children as a matter of policy seemed unthinkable. It seemed just wrong, morally wrong,” Morris said, speaking at a press conference for Separation at the Venice Film Festival, where the movie has its world premiere. “These are policies that could happen again, and we must ensure that they never, never happen again.”
Soboroff noted that the combination of his reporting with Morris’ skills as a filmmaker, particularly in the movie’s dramatic reconstruction sequences — where we watch a mother and her son flee to the United States, only to be brutally separated at the border — got to an “emotional truth” of the story impossible to do in a television news report.
“There is no footage of the separations happening inside the detention centers, and Errol and the whole team were able to capture the essence,” said Soboroff, “in a way that impacts people, in the way that only Errol can.”
While Soboroff was careful to note the film is not solely about Trump — “Trump did this, but none of this would have been possible were it not for decades of bipartisan, democrats and republicans, pushing for a deterrence-based punishment-based immigration policy that was designed to hurt people” — but the potential for a second Trump term was obviously on their mind.
Morris called out Trump’s vice-presidential running mate, for his silence on the issue of child separation.
“JD Vance seems so concerned about children, families with children [suggesting] that perhaps only people with children should have the right to vote in America,” said Morris. “Well, how does he feel about policies that deliberately hurt children? Is that okay? Is that permissible? Is that something that we want to endorse?”
Morris said it was “essential” Separation comes out in the U.S. before the election. To date, the documentary, a production of NBC News Studios, Participant, Fourth Floor, and Moxie Pictures, has not found a domestic home. “You don’t know what the effect of anything is going to be,” noted Morris, “but I want this to come out before the election with the hope that it could make a difference.”