Undocumented Dreams, UNT grad student Sara Masetti's film about the student movement for passage of the DREAM Act, has been chosen for screening at this month's New Filmmakers Series in New York City.
The short film, Masetti's second for her master’s degree in documentary film production, will screen March 13 in New York as part of New Filmmakers’ Latino film series. It features Loren Campos, a native of Mexico and an activist for passage of the DREAM Act. A 2011 civil engineering graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, Campos came to the U.S. at age 11 with his mother, who fled an abusive marriage.
Masetti, who came to the U.S. from Italy and earned her bachelor’s degree in radio, television and film from UT-Austin, found out about Campos through his blog. She calls the DREAM Act, a federal bill that would provide conditional permanent U.S. residency to high school graduates who arrived in the U.S. as minors and are currently enrolled in college, “a sensitive topic,” per a UNT release.
"One of the challenges was trying to craft an argument that could be appealing to both sides of the debates,” she says in the release. “I was trying the human story, and breach through Loren’s official identity as the representative for the DREAM act youth movement.”
Undocumented Dreams was also shown at Denton’s Thin Line Film Fest and the Dam Short Film Fest in Boulder City, Nev., in February, and the United Nations Film Festival in San Francisco last fall.
Masetti is working on her master’s thesis documentary, a 20-minute film about her coming to terms with her two lives — the one as a student in the U.S. and the one in her hometown in Italy. She has been traveling back and forth to Italy to shoot the film, called The Ocean In Between.
Here's the trailer for Undocumented Dreams:
