The Unafraid by Anayansi Prado and Heather Courtney (review)

In Georgia, in-state tuition is by law unavailable to undocumented students, including Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) students.¹ At a moment when President Trump has sealed off new applications for DACA, The Unafraid explores the lives of three DACA recipients—Alejandro, Silvia, and Aldo—to reveal that even with enrollment in the program, their lives are confined and limited by their ambiguous legal status, and further complicated by the undocumented status of their parents.

Figure 1.

The Unafraid. Anayansi Prado and Heather Courtney, 2018. 85 mins.

Courtesy: GOOD DOCS.

Produced by Panamanian American migrant Anayansi Prado and European American Heather Courtney, The Unafraid documents a crucial moment of both repression and resistance as Freedom University emerged to provide a site of support for undocumented college-aspiring youth in Georgia.² Alejandro, Silvia, and Aldo begin the film epitomizing their identity as "Dreamers" as they articulate their visions of the future as, respectively, an astrophysicist, nurse, and astronaut. Together they articulate their desire for stability for themselves and for their families. Their family's working-class lifestyle features collective work and home as Silvia is depicted taking care of her younger US citizen sisters, Alejandro works at a baking factory and as a server, and Aldo works with his uncles as an apprentice in his father's auto mechanic shop. The film does an excellent job at centering the voices of the three young people and their families; there is no narrating except for short passages that appear on the screen at moments to explain the context.

The film begins by highlighting how graduation from high school becomes not only a celebration but also a struggle within the legal confines of the university ban. The film does a wonderful job of narrating the internal and family turmoil this evokes as well as the agency the youth take in exploring the options that do exist. They gather around Freedom University to learn and mobilize, and take political action in a number of ways including demonstrations, civil disobedience, and engagement with local government processes and lobbying.

The students discuss the significance of activism that serves as an important means of evoking their agency in a frustrating structural context. Alejandro, for instance, discusses how in these spaces of struggle he shifted his identity as "illegal" toward being "undocumented and unafraid." Another scene documents Alejandro's decision to participate in a sit-in at the University of Georgia campus. A sign on the closed classroom door where undocumented students and their allies conduct the sit-in reads, "Desegregation in progress." The film then powerfully captures Silvia giving her testimony to the legislative committee considering Senate Bill 44 proposing to give DACA students in-state tuition. With these students and their families also disenfranchised from the voting booth, the film demonstrates ways of being political outside of the electoral realm.

The film establishes this critical voice and radicalizing consciousness while featuring the barriers maintained by the law. We witness Silvia and Aldo hearing back from college counselors who state that federal financial aid is not available to them as DACA/undocumented students. College representatives quote the exorbitant price of out-of-state tuition even for the local community college that is clearly out of reach for them. A lobbyist testifies against SB 44, arguing that it is not possible to make distinctions between terrorists and undocumented immigrants. SB 44 dies as Georgia to this date continues to bar undocumented and DACA students from in-state tuition.³ These scenes of resistance and repression set the tone in the first half of the film at the intersections of family day-to-day life, political engagement as a viable avenue.

The intelligence, resolve, and heart-felt collectivity of the families is beautifully depicted. A scene where Aldo's mechanic uncle defines the barriers in front of his nephew as evidence of the "American nightmare" that many immigrant families come to understand as they live their lives in the...