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Art Award, 2019 Sheffield Doc/Fest
Official Selection, 2019 International Film Festival Rotterdam
Official Selection, 2019 Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival

With digital camera in tow, filmmaker Miko Revereza travels by train across the continental United States, not to capture the purple mountain majesty or amber waves of grain, but to explore memories from his family’s past. As the endless miles of fly-over country bleed together, the rattling railroad tracks slowly rock us into submission, and fleeting conversations between other passengers overlap with these often expressionistic and personal recollections.

While most non-fiction efforts would use voice-over narration to convey these thoughts, Revereza utilizes on-screen text and subtitles that double as confessions of secrets both revealing and damning. As an undocumented Filipino American, this is Revereza’s way of confronting what it means to be voiceless in a fear-mongering modern society where ICE agents seem to be lying in wait at every train depot.

Instead of turning his gaze away from these harsh realities, Revereza stares them down with an intimately raw camera style that transcends normal descriptions of hand-held cinematography. Both poetic and sobering, the result is an intimately personal experimental documentary that provides a glass-smudged vision of America during the Trump presidency.

–Glenn Heath Jr.

Precedes

Distancing

Directed by Miko Revereza

Footprints home for an undocumented Filipino American, rendered through blurry eyes and DVD rips.