SEPARATED Luminaries

Screening to be followed by a conversation with NBC News and MSNBC correspondent Jacob Soboroff.

The latest from master documentarian Errol Morris is an incisive look at the surreptitiously implemented child separation policy under the Trump administration, from its disturbing conception to a disorganized dismantling that has left thousands of children separated from their families to this day. Interweaving interviews, archival footage and reenactments, this expertly crafted investigation recalls the events that brought the policy into the political spotlight and asks how it could ever have been put into action. Continuing a career-long fascination with the human capacity to commit atrocities, Morris lays out the hierarchy of this tragedy, beginning with its architects at the top (Jeff Sessions, Stephen Miller and Kirstjen Nielsen) who envisioned it as a grand deterrent for migrants entering the country. Then below them, the yes-men, with Morris securing a remarkable extended interview with then-director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement Scott Lloyd, down to those who were simply following orders. In retelling these events, Morris points to the inhumanity of this policy as systemic and non-partisan and warns that it could happen again. –Malin Kan