A Lien: Shattering Drama on US immigration and the Home that is No More

Sam and David Cutler-Kreutz’s nimbly titled A Lien lets itself be cut up to pieces by the narrative of a family taken apart by the machinations of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

A drama of near-misses, near-saves, and the ordeals in between, the story has already moved past any notions of peace or even garden variety stasis by the time the plot introduces Sophia (Victoria Ratermanis), Oscar (William Martinez), and their daughter, Nina (Koralyn Rivera). They are nearly late to Oscar’s green card interview and there are documents at least the number of years the couple has been together to keep track of. The camera rarely catches the three in one frame, caught as it is in the emotional onslaught of the day’s events. 

Soon enough, the family is physically separated when Sophia rushes to keep her appointment, and Oscar and Nina head to his interview. For the rest of the film, they will struggle futilely against forces both immovably cruel and unstoppably insidious. It will be monotonous until it is not and any victory will be bittersweet to the hollowest degree. 

When done without cars, chase sequences make for an excellent showcase of inescapable humanity—not only for the obvious physical limitations, but rather for the human despair the limitations bring forth. In the absence of big, sexy, catapulting, and often exploding cars, there is nothing to convert the fear of loss into the thrill of speed. Much of A Lien involves these chases, and all of it radiates the fear—that you will be kicked awake from the American Dream—behind them.

Fittingly then, this is a film of  closeups—dirty, handheld, shaky—and it turns Sophia into the reluctant hero. That is to say, panicked, frenzied, and thrown into a corner where the only option is to scramble to save her family without the luxury of dignity. Ratermanis is terrific as the only one in the family whose pleas are assigned any weight and then only so much. 

A Lien escalates its tension to breaking point and does so with skill. It sums up in fifteen minutes the exhaustion of living under the constant existential threat that is at the core of immigrant life in America. When the tension does break, the numbness is steep and all-pervading, so that going through the motions is all anyone can muster the strength for. 

Watch A Lien Short Film

Watch A Lien Short Film Trailer