Festival Predictions

2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Cristina Ibarra & Alex Rivera’s The Infiltrators

Published on November 16, 2017

The docs are often the toughest nuggets to guess in our annual Sundance predictions, as we had Cristina Ibarra & Alex Rivera‘s The Infiltrators pegged for a launch this past January. Put they’ve been busy in 2017, as they landed some press, some funds, worked in some in-progress screenings (with plans of making this into a series), some support from Hot Docs, and finally, were among the eight projects for Annual Documentary Edit and Story Lab at Sundance. As we mentioned last year, it’s been a while since Sleep Dealer dropped. Both the Tribeca and Sundance Institutes supported the project with post-production coin.

Gist: This is the true story of two young undocumented Americans who “infiltrated” a for-profit immigrant detention center. The documentary and film tour focuses on the true story of Marco Saavedra and Viridiana Martinez, two young undocumented immigrant activists who infiltrated a secretive for-profit detention center. By intentionally getting detained by the Border Patrol, Marco and Viri went into detention themselves to uncover cases of abuse, organize behind bars, and help other immigrants get free. The documentary camera was the only camera following the activists as they executed their groundbreaking actions.

Production Co./Producers: Alex Rivera & Cristina Ibarra.

Prediction: U.S. Documentary Comp.

U.S. Distributor: Rights Available. TBD (domestic). TBD (international)

Eric Lavallée

Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).