2025-2026 Pragda Spanish Film Club

"Cristina Ibarra and Alex Rivera’s powerfully inventive docu-thriller — a prison escape drama in reverse — tells the incredible true story of Marco and Viri, two members of the Dreamer-led National Immigrant Youth Alliance who embark on a mission to stop deportations from within a for-profit immigration detention center. Intentionally getting themselves detained, the two young activists find themselves living among hundreds of multinational immigrants — all imprisoned without trial. As they discover a nightmarishly complex institution, they work undercover to impede some of the imminent deportations. Interlacing documentary footage of the real “infiltrators” with scripted re-enactments, The Infiltrators is both a gripping account of a high-stakes mission and an urgent, vital portrait of a group of inspirational young people fighting for change."

Alex Rivera has been telling new, urgent, and visually adventurous Latino stories for more than twenty years. His first feature film, Sleep Dealer, won multiple awards at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and the Berlin International Film Festival. Rivera’s second feature film, The Infiltrators, won both the Audience Award and the Innovators Award in the NEXT section of the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.

Cristina Ibarra is a brown border crosser and an award-winning independent filmmaker with roots along the Texas/Mexico border. The New York Times called her previous documentary, Las Marthas, “a striking alternative portrait of border life”. It premiered on Independent Lens in 2014 and was awarded the Best US Latino Film by Cinema Tropical. USA Today describes The Last Conquistador, her feature documentary collaboration that premiered on POV in 2008, as “Heroic”. Her directorial debut, Dirty Laundry: A Homemade Telenovela, was broadcast on PBS.