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9500 Liberty Documentary Fuels Immigration Debate

For anyone who has seen the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers, they might get that same feeling of “us” versus “them” that fills the truly indie 9500 Liberty. [social_buttons]Body Snatchers grabbed its content and texture from the red scare, the McCarthy era where people believed that Communists (or rather aliens) launched an invasion of the small town. 9500 Liberty takes that same feeling with a Virginia town that according to some locals has been invaded by Zapatistas but the scary thing here is that the film here is a documentary.

In the McMansion and McMall loaded Prince William County, a wealthy suburb of Washington D.C., directors Annabel Park and Eric Byler weave a hot button topic film that shows a community hatefully splitting itself in halfย  — one side the conservative, wealthy Anglos that wish their community to remain lily white and the other side the immigrants who built the McMansions, cook the food and represent much of the quiet economy of the town. The film shows the racial divide that forms as a result of a one notable blogger who creates a fear camping and gets the city council to enact an immigration policy that requires police officers to question anyone they have โ€œprobable causeโ€ to suspect as being an undocumented immigrant.

Although the film documents the protests in and front of the local government offices, the real battle takes place through the Internet as the immigrants and their supporters create their own resistance using You Tube videos (shot by the filmmakers) as well as counter blogs.ย  The filmmakers create an all too scary vibe mostly because of the scary xenophobia and racism that exists under the guise of politicking. As director Byler mentioned before last nightโ€™s West Coast Premiere in San Francisco, โ€œThis is a cautionary tale where people are afraid to act in predictable ways.โ€ He followed up by saying, โ€œItโ€™s a cheap lesson.โ€ For the price of a movie ticket, the people who see the film will get a town full of objective education.

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