Sam and David Cutler-Kreutz on The Oscar Nominated Short Film A Lien

How do you play by the rules of the system when the system is playing you? This question is at the heart of the Academy Award-nominated short film A Lien, written and directed by brothers Sam and David Cutler-Kreutz. A harrowing portrayal of the U.S. immigration system through a deeply personal lens, the 15-minute drama follows three people:  Oscar (William Martinez), Sophie (Victoria Ratermanis) and Nina (Koralyn Rivera). The couple and their young daughter arrive at a routine green card interview, only to find themselves ensnared in an unexpected nightmare as ICE agents use the interview — required to gain citizenship — as an opportunity to arrest Oscar for being undocumented.

“Our process is one where we’re constantly throwing ideas back and forth, and this one just kept coming up,” David says of the all too common practice, which the brothers learned about from an article in The New York Times. “We felt inspired to go on a deep dive — talking to people who had gone through this, speaking with lawyers — to ensure we were telling a story that felt authentic to the experience,” David says. The Cutler-Kreutz brothers were raised in New Jersey without a television, and the brothers started making movies when their father bought them a mini digital video camera. Sam and David had already been developing their own worlds through play, and adding a camera to the mix quite literally brought their creative instinct into focus. “We were making things instead of copying what we saw on TV,” Sam says. “We were just making things that came out of our own heads.” Later, Sam pursued film school, while David took a different path as a professional mountaineer before they reunited to take a serious go at becoming a filmmaking duo.

The intimate story and and tense atmosphere of A Lien shines a light on the systemic injustices of immigration enforcement, particularly the disturbing practice of detaining undocumented individuals during official proceedings. The film has earned critical acclaim, securing an Academy Award nomination and sparking conversations about immigration reform. “One of the things that struck us off the bat was the twisting of the rules — the fact that these people are trying to do the right thing and are still being persecuted for it,” Sam says. “That kind of unfairness sparked an anger in us. It felt not only indicative of this small story but reflective of the larger immigration crisis as a whole. We built a system for humans that, in some ways, lacks fundamental humanity.”  

The film has been met with great acclaim, sparking conversations about immigration reform, and with its Oscar nomination, has the potential to draw attention to the realities of an already cruel system that has only gotten worse since the beginning of the new presidential administration. While Donald Trump appears briefly on a TV screen, his presence is used primarily to establish the time and place of the setting, which is during the divisive and controversial President’s first administration. While Trump’s presence in the film now adds a certain sense of pathos, the brothers emphasize that it’s not about trying to milk his presence for their message. “You’ve got to be careful not to be preachy at people,” David says, “I think we tried really hard in the film to keep it focused on the family, on Sophie and Oscar and Nina…he’s in there for less than half a second. It’s a little bit of a reminder, ‘Okay, this is kind of where we are, in this time moment in time for these people’.” The same wry sense of irony that Trump’s appearance brings is reflected in the duality of film’s title, which plays on the legal concept of a lien, and the word “alien.”  “The idea of a lien felt fitting here. It’s this sense that the government believes it has the right to repossess a person,” David says. “Even after doing everything right, you can still have this weight hanging over you. That uncertainty — the waiting, the fear — is something immigrants live with constantly.”

Visually, the Cutler-Kreutz brothers crafted an immersive and claustrophobic experience. “We shot on an Alexa High Speed with Zeiss B-Speed lenses, aiming for a documentary feel,” Sam says. “These kinds of stories can easily be told in a melodramatic way, but we wanted it to feel like you were inside the film with the characters. As their situation becomes more stressful, the walls close in — the lenses get longer, the framing gets tighter. It mirrors their growing fear and confusion.”

Whether or not the brothers walk away with a statuette on Sunday, March 2, that’s not the Oscar that A Lien is really about. It’s about a man, a husband and father, whose life is destroyed by a broken system. Through meticulous research and a deeply personal approach to filmmaking, Sam and David Cutler-Kreutz have created a film that doesn’t just depict a crisis — it demands that audiences feel it.

You can view the film A Lien on Vimeo here!

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