Documentary Feature Film, 1 hour 12 minutes, International Premiere

Synopsis: In La Joya, Texas, a small town on the Mexican border, police chief Ramon Gonzalez, detective Manuel Casas and officer Mayra Garza search on a daily basis for traces of human traffickers who help migrants and refugees cross the border to the United States. These hunts frequently result in perilous pursuits of traffickers transporting migrants. But no matter how convinced they are of the importance of their mission to catch smugglers, doubts gradually seem to arise among them too.

Loretta van der Horst

Bio:

Loretta is a Dutch-Puerto Rican Emmy nominated filmmaker focusing on human stories about people in extraordinary situations, be they political, social, psychological, or otherwise. Her debut feature documentary Behind the Blood, a film that portrays the struggles of three individuals dealing with gang and police violence in her birth country Honduras, premiered at IDFA 2019 and won the award for best International Documentary at the HUMAN film festival Oslo 2020.

Her first short film Sound of Vision (2013, PBS POV) was nominated for an Emmy, as was her first documentary as a line producer Huesos que Hablan (Discovery Channel, 2014).
Loretta holds an M.A. from NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute where she focused on documentary filmmaking. After graduating she started reporting about human rights and social issues including the drug industry in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, animal trafficking in the Amazon jungle and forensic investigations into disappearances on the US-Mexico border. Loretta also holds an M.A. in Conflict Studies and Human Rights from the University of Utrecht, which gave her the opportunity to do the research that led to her first feature documentary.