Film producer visits Spanish class
Film producer Darren Dean visited a Spanish class on October 17 to discuss his new film The Infiltrators. The visit was prompted by the Milwaukee Film Festival, where the film was shown for the first time. Dean talked to the class about the movie and its message, though the class didn’t actually view it.
“The Infiltrators is about a man who gets detained by ICE, and the group of activists that try to infiltrate the ICE detention center he’s in to get him out,” Dean said.
The film covers the many issues surrounding immigration, a very prevalent topic that Dean thinks needs to be addressed.
“Look around,” Dean said. “It’s happening right now. People are getting put in detention centers. It’s not going away. We’ve done what we can to try to get people aware of what’s going on and it seems to grow with leaps and bounds everyday. So it’s very much in our zeitgeist, it’s something that we’d like to see changed.”
Susan Leslie and Sarah Milia, Spanish teachers, invited the producer to help connect their students with what they have been learning in class.
“In Spanish V, we have been investigating, learning about and watched a film related to immigration, primarily those people who are crossing the border illegally,” Leslie said. “This is something that’s been an issue in our country for decades and it’s certainly been more in the news in the last couple of years.”
Leslie thinks learning about the immigration crisis will not only give students a better understanding of the world around them, but also help them with comprehension of similar topics in the future.
“One thing I’ve mentioned to my class is that they probably know more about what’s going on with the immigration issue in our country than many of the people around them,” Leslie said. “With anything that has multiple sides and varieties of experiences, being able to understand the multiplicity and the depth of all of that around one issue helps to inform the way we look at other issues.”
Peter Nikolaus, senior, agrees.
“Especially in this political era, immigration is something that is highly focused on by a lot of people,” Nikolaus said. “So having someone talk to younger people to give them a better idea of what’s really going on was really valuable and should be done in more places.”
Audrey Oldfather, junior, thinks it’s important to take it a step further.
“If we want to make change and fix [these] issues, that’s going to be on us,” Oldfather said. “Learning all that we can now about it is only going to help people be more educated and more able to make better changes in the future.”
This message is exactly what Dean wanted to portray in the film.
“Don’t be afraid to stand up and try to change things,” Dean said. “The message is very, very clear. This is not in the hands of the undocumented folks, the solution is in the hands of America. It’s been made very clear that we’re the ones with the power so let’s empower ourselves to help these people.”