Laura Poitras Turns Horror Lens on ICE Terror in New Documentary

Laura Poitras isn't making a typical documentary about Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Working with co-director Rachel Lauren Mueller, the legendary filmmaker is leaning into horror and dystopian aesthetics to show what ICE raids actually feel like — the fear, the surveillance, the creeping dread that becomes normal when it shouldn't be.

Ahead of the Venice premiere, Poitras was blunt: what's happening in the U.S. is a nightmare. The film, titled They're Here, uses the vocabulary of genre cinema — the visual language that makes audiences uncomfortable on purpose — to refuse the comfortable distance people take from immigration enforcement violence.

This is classic Poitras: starting from a specific place (Minneapolis) to ask bigger questions about power, fear, and what we're willing to ignore. Using horror isn't hyperbole when the subject is real people living in genuine terror. The move is smart filmmaking and necessary politics.

Check the source for the full breakdown of what Poitras and Mueller built here.

Read the full story at The Hollywood Reporter → https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/laura-poitras-ice-documentary-theyre-here-us-is-nightmare-1236693186/