Overview
- Laura Poitras and co-director Rachel Lauren Mueller screened the 22–25 minute documentary They’re Here at the Venice Film Festival on Monday to strong critical notice.
- The film reconstructs a months-long, heavily policed ICE operation in Minneapolis using dashcam footage, crowdsourced maps and ground-level video to show alleged abductions, shackled detainees and masked agents confronting residents.
- Poitras and the filmmakers credit sustained community-led tracking and protest with prompting roughly an 80 percent withdrawal of ICE operatives from Minneapolis, a claim presented in the film and at the premiere.
- At the Venice screening Poitras also cited large numerical claims about ICE’s budget and recent abductions; those specific figures were reported as filmmaker statements and have not been independently confirmed by news outlets.
- The film uses horror and dystopian techniques to make events feel immediate and is entering debate about U.S. deportation policy by translating on-the-ground documentation into a visceral journalistic argument.