Status Pending Film Screening and Panel Discussion ♥

Status Pending

Film Screening and Panel Discussion

With Immigration Law under attack, Status Pending follows five Mexican-American Immigration lawyers who form a support group as they strive to help their clients obtain safety and status in the United States.

We hope you will join us for the film and panel discussion and Q&A with the filmmaker, Priscilla González Sainz, and UCI Law clinical professors Annie Lai and Mónica Ramírez Almadani.

About the Film

Contending with constant attacks on Immigrants and Immigration Law, lawyers on the frontlines are feeling burned out and disillusioned. This film portrays the five members of an informal support group comprised of Mexican-American solo-practitioners who got their start at the same high-intensity law firm in Los Angeles. Through their friendship and group chat, they provide professional, personal, and emotional support as they navigate the constant attacks on their clients and profession. Through their perspectives, we see how changes in the interpretation of the laws and in legal procedures directly affect their clients by endangering their safety and prolonging family separation. After several years in the trenches, even the most dedicated come to question whether they can continue in this heartbreaking line of work.

About the Director

Priscilla González Sainz is an award-winning writer and filmmaker who specializes in non-fiction media. Her parents immigrated from Mexico and she grew up in Southern California. Priscilla’s work depicts migrant and first-generation stories, exploring themes of displacement, identity, and transnationalism. She hopes to tell stories that call social, cultural, and perceived barriers into question. Priscilla earned her MFA in Documentary Film and Video from Stanford University, where she was awarded a Stanford Arts grant and curated the Latin American Cinema series Espejos. Her thesis film ROOM 140 was a Student Academy Award Semifinalist and was nominated for the IDA Wolper Student Documentary Achievement Award. Her work has been supported by Tribeca Film Institute and NALIP.

Sunday, April 11, 2021

Film Screening: 9:30 – 10:00 a.m. PDT

Panel Discussion: 10:00 – 10:45 a.m. PDT

RSVP

Zoom details will be sent to those who register.

This is an event of The Future of Latinos in the United States: Law, Opportunity, and Mobility, a project of the American Bar Foundation with its campus home at UCI Law. The event is sponsored by the Future of Latinos Initiative and Admissions at UCI Law.

For more event details or to request reasonable accommodations for a disability,

please email centers@law.uci.edu