¿Are We There Yet?: A Compassionate Exploration of Contemporary Immigration, A new documentary film by Ithaca area Producer/Director Thomas Hoebbel will hold a premiere event on October 23rd at 6PM at Cinemapolis in downtown Ithaca, NY.
The documentary first emerged through a collaboration between Jennifer Majka on behalf of Cornell University’s Just Futures Initiative and Kenneth Clarke, director of the Tompkins County Office of Human Rights who are co-producers of the film. Clarke and Majka tapped Thomas Hoebbel, a local photographer and filmmaker, to take on the task of producing a film about immigration.
The film, which originally focused on Ithaca area immigrants and experts, contains multiple interviews conducted with Tompkins County residents who are featured in the film. The project quickly expanded and filming took Hoebbel to Orlando, FL, Boston, MA, as well as Tijuana, Mexico for further interviews with migrants and immigrants to the United States. A final interview was held in August with Orlando Nodarse Hernández, a recent Cuban refugee who was jailed while painting a protest piece in a public square in his town of Viñales Cuba in 2021. Orlando’s immigration application to the US was sponsored by an Ithaca resident and business owner who has also taken an interest in supporting the film.
The film takes a compassionate look at migration and facilitates immigrants telling their own stories: of their journeys to the United States, hardships they experienced along the way and the challenges they have faced in the US. The film contrasts these personal narratives with the rhetoric being espoused by national figures proclaiming an immigration crisis or an “invasion” of our country.
Throughout the film, we discover stories of flights from violence whether perpetrated by family members, communities, gangs, even infamous drug kingpins. Subjects in the film are from Afghanistan, Myanmar, Colombia, Cuba Guatemala, Mexico, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe.
We hear from Drucila, a young woman from Guatemala, whose father was murdered by local villagers when she was four years old. Her family then received a letter warning them not to go to the police or they would all be killed. Isaac was studying at Cornell University when his wife and children in Zimbabwe were confronted in their home by ten soldiers and police warning them that he should stop participating in politics in the US. Khurshid was flown to the U.S. by the military in a C-17 after the Taliban retook Kabul during the American withdrawal from Afghanistan. As she was racing to her home to flee the Taliban she asked her mother to kill her rather than let her be taken captive. The film also visits Casa del Migrantes in Tijuana, Mexico to get an inside look at a shelter housing and caring for migrants as they wait, sometimes for months, to receive an asylum hearing at the US border. The film’s crew also spent time at the border wall in Tijuana and spoke with Javier who was first deported when he was 11 years old and is now an artist raising awareness of the plight of deportees and contributing murals to the Mexican side of the wall.
The film also airs political voices and legal experts on some of the most contentious aspects of immigration policy as well as possible solutions to this growing concern. Tompkins County and New York State elected representatives appear in the film along with academic voices from Cornell University and Ithaca College.
The film was financed in part by a grant from the Mellon Foundation via Cornell University and by a special opportunity stipend from the Community Arts Partnership of Tompkins County. Additional funds were raised through a crowdfunding campaign that was supported by many Tompkins County residents.