Las Abogadas Documentary Film Trailer 9 2022 4K
To see the film: www.lasabogadasfilm.com
Synopsis:
FOR A GROUP OF EXTRAORDINARY WOMEN WHO PRACTICE IMMIGRATION LAW, THE REFUGEE CRISIS IS A CALL TO ACTION THEY CAN'T IGNORE.
In 2019, we began pre-production of this important documentary film. With the rhetoric in Washington increasing to a fever pitch around the subject of refugees coming to the southern border, it was important for director Victoria Bruce to be a part of bringing a humanitarian face to the crisis.
After learning attorneys Rebecca Eichler and Charlene D’Cruz drove a VW bus to intercept 5000 migrants in central Mexico and offer legal advice in 2018, the protagonists for the documentary became clear. By centering the film around brave women attorneys often working for non-profits or completely pro bono, we could show true modern-day heroes standing up to insurmountable odds. Women who were trained to use the law to protect the most vulnerable were having their tools systematically twisted, canceled, and pulled out from under their critical work.
The narrative of Las Abogadas centers around these brilliant women, all of whom gave us complete access to their lives and their practices. Among their clients, we have been given permission to film heartbreaking and heartwarming refugee stories as well.
Our protagonists include:
Rebecca Eichler, a retired attorney and first-generation American of Chinese and German descent currently living in central Mexico.
Charlene D’Cruz, who left India as a teenager to attend college in the U.S. and found she faced intense discrimination as a woman and immigrant, something that continues to this day.
Jodi Goodwin, a Texas-based mother of four who created the first sidewalk legal clinic as migrant families were bottlenecked in the blazing Mexican sun.
Mulu Alemayehu, an Ethiopian-American who came to the U.S. as a political refugee and fulfilled her dream of studying law to help others being persecuted.
While we were sidelined from location shooting during the pandemic, we still kept tabs on our characters and their journeys. We gathered footage they shot themselves as they reacted to the increasingly hostile laws and policies rolled out almost daily, and their own stress of living under quarantine.
The film begins with a flashback to when Charlene and Rebecca meet at the caravan, and follows them working together in the Matamoros refugee camp just as the global pandemic is about to shut everything down. We learn the story of Jodi Goodwin, an attorney know