People on the Move: UNM Theatre and Dance Faculty Dominika Laster Presents New Documentary on EU Border Crisis

The screening will take place on 23 November at 1 PM at the Guild Cinema, 3405 Central Avenue NE, Albuquerque, NM. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the ABQ-based filmmaker Dominika Laster moderated by artist, poet, and border scholar Santiago Vaquera-Vásquez.

This is a special, pre-release free community screening.

The documentary short (16 min.) is directed by Dominika Laster and Trevor Meier documents the dire humanitarian crisis of non-white refugees stranded on the Poland-Belarus border and explores the local activist interventions to address the situation. The film aims to draw international attention and spark the political will to redress this crisis, which is both acute and chronic, and requires urgent and strategic intervention.

The story follows a small group of activists who are part of a larger network—Grupa Granica (Border Group)—that emerged spontaneously to address the brutality and human rights abuses perpetrated by border patrol on both sides of the Poland-Belarus border and acts as direct redress of state inaction. The narrative arc traces a clandestine rescue action carried out in the Białowieża Forest—one of the last and largest remaining parts of an immense primeval forest that once stretched across the European Plain—commonly referred to by refugees as “the Jungle.”

Hollywood actor, director, and producer Noah Emmerich (The Truman Show, The Americans) is one of the Associate Producers of the film. The film narrator is renown Polish actor and director Andrzej Seweryn who has starred in 70 films (Queen, 2022 Netflix series; Mahabharata 1989 dir. Peter Brook; Danton, 1983 dir. Andrzej Wajda).

The film had its pre-release screening in Paris at symposium on the green border between Poland and Belarus “Zielona Granica – Engagement, Recherche, Création, on 18 September 2024 at the Université Paris Cité. It is also an official selection at the Warsaw International Film Festival and the NYC Independent Film Festival.

The film’s executive producer and director, Dominika Laster, is based in Albuquerque and is faculty in the UNM Department of Theatre and Dance.

Screening Speakers

Dominika Laster is a transdisciplinary artist, performance maker, theatre director, writer, and researcher with a with a vigorous creative and curatorial practice advancing interdisciplinary research-driven creative work that is deeply committed to issues related to precarity, inclusivity, practices of care, decoloniality, and critical utopias.
She is Associate Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies in the UNM Department of Theatre and Dance.
https://www.performanceperipheries.com/media
Santiago Vaquera-Vásquez is an unrepentant border crosser, ex-dj, writer, painter, and academic. His literary work has been published in anthologies in Spain, Italy, Latin America and the United States, including Malos elementos. Relatos sobre la corrupción social (2012); En la frontera: i migliori raconti della letteratura chicana (2008); Pequeñas resistencias 4 (2005); Se habla español (2000); and Líneas aéreas (1998). His stories have also appeared in journals including Etiqueta Negra, Los noveles, Paralelo Sur, Revista 0, Camino Real, and Ventana abierta. He recently published a small chapbook with a selection of already published stories, Algún día te cuento las cosas que he visto. He has been invited to give readings from his work at universities and conferences in Spain, Mexico, Colombia, and the United States. His academic work on US/Mexico border cultures has been published in journals and anthologies in Mexico and the United States. He has also presented this work at international conferences.

People on the Move | Creative Team

Voiceover: Andrzej Seweryn
Directors: Dominika Laster, Trevor Meier
Screenwriters: Marek Król, Dominika Laster
Associate Producers: Noah Emmerich, Marek Król, Angelina Mira, David Woods
Executive Producer: Dominika Laster
Editor: Marek Król
DOP: Trevor Meier
Music: Małgorzata Przedpełska-Bieniek, Katarzyna Figat
Editing Assistant: Sebastian Korwin-Kulesza
Color Grading: Joanna Skórka
Participants: Natalia Judzińska, Vitaliy Osmolovskyy, Karolina Strojnowska, Izabela Wagner
Studio: TimeLab

image: People on the Move screening at the Warsaw International Film Festival. 20 October 2024. (Photo by Alexandra Kononchenko)

From left to right:
Marek Król—Editor, Writer, Post-Production Supervisor, and Associate Producer. Marek pulled together a post-production dream team.
Karolina Strojnowska—Activist. Her narrative drives the storyline of the film.
Natalia Judzińska—Researcher and activist. Has been active on the border since the beginning of the crisis. Natalia supported the film in multiple ways from its beginnings. Along with Filip Ryba, she served as a consultant on the film.
Marcin Sośniak—lead attorney of the of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights Migration Unit offered preliminary remarks and brought incisive analytics to the post-screening conversation.
Dominika Laster—Researcher, artist, activist. Co-director and Executive Producer of People on the Move.
David Woods—Theatre artist and Associate Producer on the film.