Documentary, 26 Minutes
STATUS PENDING won the IF/Then Shorts American West Pitch competition at the 2019 Big Sky Documentary Film Festival
Supported by Tribeca Film Institute and National Association of Latino Independent Producer
‘Status Pending’ will premiere on Al Jazeera English’s flagship documentary strand, WITNESS, and will be available online to viewers around the world for a limited time.
Director/Producer: Priscilla González Sainz
Producer: Laura Reich
Editor: Sarah Garrahan
Synopsis: Contending with the constant attack on immigrants and Immigration Law, the lawyers on the frontlines are feeling burned out and disillusioned. This film takes us into the lives and work of five members of an informal support group comprised of Mexican-American, solo-practitioners who got their start at the same high-intensity law firm in Los Angeles. Through their friendship and constant communication, Araceli, Alma, Gladdys, Elizabeth and Jose provide professional and emotional support for each other as they navigate the constant attacks on their clients and profession. Through their perspectives, we see how changes in the interpretation of the laws and in legal procedures directly affect the people they so passionately advocate for by endangering their safety and prolonging family separation. After several years in the trenches, even the most dedicated come to question whether they can continue in this often-heartbreaking line of work.
Film Festival Screenings:
Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, 2020 (World Premiere)
Aspens Shortsfest, 2020
AFI Docs, NBC’s Meet the Press
Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival (LALIFF), 2020
Double Exposure Film Festival, 2020
Philadelphia Latino Film Festival, 2020
Palm Springs International ShortsFest, 2020 - Audience Award
Prague International Film Festival (International Premiere), 2020 - Honorable Mention
Marina del Rey Film Festival, 2020
OC Film Fiesta, 2020
Justice Film Festival, 2020
Demetera Film Festival, 2021
Distribution:
Aljazeera English’s Witness strand
NBC’s Meet the Press
Xfinity Comcast Hispanic Heritage Month
Community and educational screening partners:
California Law Pathways
Immigration Resource Center of San Gabriel Valley
Center for Racial Reconciliation
Mexican American Bar Association
Emmanuel College’s Social Justice Series
Film website: https://www.statuspendingfilm.com
Insta: https://www.instagram.com/statuspendingfilm/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/statuspendingfilm
Twitter: https://twitter.com/statuspending_
Documentary – 12 minutes – HD – 2018 – USA – Spanish with English Subtitles
Complete film available on Vimeo Staff Pick KQED Truly California The Atlantic Selects
Logline:
Immigrants just released from detention centers spend their first night in Oakland at a motel, paid through the charity of a local pastor. For one night of respite, they rest, reflect, and prepare for the next phase of their journey.
Synopsis:
Through a vast communication network, Pastor Gomez is notified when someone from his community is being released from detention and has nowhere to stay. Through his work at a local motel, Pastor Gomez rents a room for the migrants to have at least one night of rest before continuing in their transition. On that night, migrants willing to be filmed share their stories.
Background:
Immigrants seeking asylum in the U.S. turn themselves in at the border and are taken to detention centers or jails. Families are often separated and there is no communication except with relatives or friends who are sponsoring their admittance. If they are granted entry to the U.S., they must purchase a bus or plane ticket and leave immediately after the order is given. After weeks and months of travel, many have no money left. And many have no place to stay as they begin the process of reconstructing their lives in a new country.
In Oakland, California, a small Guatemalan indigenous community has formed around a church led by Pastor Gomez. Pastor Gomez makes his living managing a local motel, and when he receives word that someone is being released from detention and has nowhere to go, he rents a room for them to stay. While his access allows him to secure the motel room, the cost comes out of his own pocket.
Screenings and Recognitions:
Student Academy Awards, Semifinalist, 2018
IDA David L. Wolper Student Documentary Achievement Award, 2017
Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, Mini-Doc Competition, 2018 - WORLD PREMIERE
Glass City Film Festival, 2018
San Francisco Documentary Film Festival, 2018 - BAY AREA PREMIERE
AFI Docs, 2018
Palm Springs International Festival of Short Films, 2018
DocuWest Film Festival, 2018
Los Angeles Film Festival, 2018
Oaxaca Film Festival - INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE
New Orleans Film Festival, 2018
Dumbo Film Festival, 2018
Indie and Foreign Film Festival, 2018
We Are All Others, International Short Film Festival of Social Diversity, 2018
Filmmaker Alliance’s Visionfest 2018 - Celebrating Emerging Female Filmmakers
NewFilmmakers Los Angeles DocuSlate, 2018
Latino Film Market, 2018
Vimeo Staff Pick Premiere, February 2019
Philadelphia Latino Film Festival, 2019
Oakland Shorties, July 2019
Cine Odyssey Film Festival, 2019
Distribution:
KQED’s Truly California, Season 14
Vimeo Staff Pick Premiere
The Atlantic Selects
(available for Educational Distribution)
Credits:
Directed, produced, and edited by Priscilla Gonzalez Sainz
Sound: Leonor Zúniga Gutiérrez, Chris Ward, Cheng Zhang
Technical Assistance: Paul Meyers, Mark Urbanek
Composer: Matthew Fishel
Sound Mix: Dan Olmsted
Colorist: Mark Stern
Faculty Advisors: Srdan Keca, Jan Krawitz, Jamie Meltzer
Produced in the Documentary Film and Video M.F.A., Stanford University
For press kit, please email priscillagonzalezsainz@gmail.com
a film by Kristy Guevara-Flanagan and Maite Zubiaurre
Edited by Nico Sandi
Additional editing by Priscilla Gonzalez Sainz
Along the southern desert border in Arizona, it is estimated that only one out of every five missing migrants are ever found. Águilas is the story of one group of searchers, the Aguilas del Desierto. Once a month these volunteers—construction workers, gardeners, domestic laborers by trade—set out to recover the missing, reported to them by loved ones often thousands of miles away. Amidst rising political repression and cartel violence, as well as the eternal difficulties of travel in the Sonoran Desert, the Aguilas carry out their solemn task.
Águilas lays bare the tragic reality of migrant death by venturing deep into the wilderness of the borderlands. The desert is a vast cemetery where the bodies and dried bones of migrants lie exposed under the scorching sun. In a world where efforts to humanize the migrant experience often get lost within the statistics and headlines, this documentary provides an observational and poetic response to one of the most pressing issues of our time, undocumented immigration and the hardships of the border crossing experience.
Film Festival Screenings:
Big Sky Documentary Film Festival 2021, Winner of the Mini-Doc Award
SXSW, 2021
https://www.aguilasdocumentary.com
Documentary (in Post-Production)
Co-Writer, Post Production Consultant
Directed by Kristal Sotomayor
When countless Philadelphia immigrants faced deportation because of the city’s sharing of its police database with Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE), Juntos, a grassroots Latinx immigrant rights organization, teams up with the local immigrant community to put an end to this unconstitutional agreement .
Supported by
North Shorts Grants and Residency
Film Scholar Fellowship Program at Scribe Video Center, co-sponsored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Media Maker Presented for GoodPitch, hosted by Doc Society and Good Pitch
Works in Progress Lab, Philadelphia Latino Film Festival
Arts & Change Grant, Leeway Foundation
Philadelphia Independent Media Fund Grant
a film by Cristina Ibarra and Alex Rivera
(USA, 2019, 95 min. In English and Spanish with English subtitles)
Priscilla Gonzalez Sainz credited as Assistant Editor
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 “rather than feeling like homework, watching it is a thrill.”
Winner of the Next Innovator and Audience Awards at the Sundance Film Festival and the Cinema Tropical Award for Best U.S. Latinx Film.
http://www.infiltratorsfilm.com
Documentary, 8 minutes
"A daughter crafts a portrait of her father through the spaces he occupied, a meditation shaped by the tools he left behind.”
After my father died, my mother left his workshop in the garage untouched. I go back to see what these things tell me about the father I did not know.
Trailer: https://vimeo.com/206608876
Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, 2017 - Premiere
San Francisco DocFest, 2017
New Orleans Film Festival, 2017
Los Angeles Video Consortium, 2018
Boynton Beach Film Festival, 2018
Sunday Shorts Film Festival, 2020
Philadelphia Latino Film Festival, 2021
Documentary, 10 minutes
Self-proclaimed nuns devote their lives to the healing powers of cannabis.
Mill Valley Film Festival, 2016
San Francisco DocFest, 2016
Documentary, 4 minutes
16MM black and white, shot on a Bolex camera
