American filmmaker Errol Morris: 'This country, for me, is a disaster'
The pioneering documentarian says he made his latest film Separatedwas driven by a “feeling of growing horror” at the United States' government's immigration policies.
In Separated , Errol Morris - whose been called a cinematic sleuth - explores the U.S. government's family separation policy during the first Trump administration.
The story is based on investigative journalist Jacob Soboroff's book, Separated: Inside an American Tragedy.
Morris's film combines interviews with former government officials, legal experts, and whistleblowers, with dramatised scenes of one migrant family's experience of being detained and split apart.
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“Immigration and immigrants are at the heart of America. After all, it's a country of immigrants. Don't we have this big statue given to us by France sitting in the middle of New York Harbor and welcoming immigrants to our shores? What is going on?
“It's a feeling of growing horror, horror the policies of my government continue to the present time. It's gotten worse,” he told RNZ’s Saturday Morning.
Morris shows the bureaucratic systems that allowed the separation policy to happen, and the emotional toll of the policy on both children and parents.
An estimated 5500 children were separated from their parents, 1300 of which have never been reunited, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Interview subjects include the former Acting Secretary of Homeland Security, and Jonathan White, a public health official who risked his career to speak out.
Not all bureaucrats share White’s moral compass, Morris says.
“It's interesting to see that there are bureaucrats and there are bureaucrats. Bureaucrats who have principles, ethics, a sense of morality, and there are bureaucrats who are just lacking in any kind of morality and just see their position as an opportunity for advancement.
“Call it whatever you want, call it the banality of evil. I have a theory that supersedes Hannah Arendt, at least I think it does, the stupidity of evil, of people being able to do these jobs and not even see the scope of what they're doing at all, because they're too stupid to even really see what they're doing.”
Morris, who won an Oscar for his 2003 film Fog of War, says he never imagined his country could come to this place.
“American citizens being deported, lots of people being deported without any kind of due process whatsoever. I never thought that my country, this country, the United States, would turn Fascist, but it's coming very, very, very close.”
Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff for policy and United States homeland security advisor is at the heart of US immigration policy, Morris says.
“He's involved in all policies involved with immigrants and immigration. If you open up the paper, I get three papers delivered to me in the morning. I get the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Boston Globe - I live in Cambridge, Massachusetts - it's a horror show.
“It's the morning horror show where you get to read the most despicable things every single day. Students being arrested for protesting the genocide in Gaza, immigrants being deported, actual American citizens being deported or detained. It goes on and on and on and on.”
He is scathing about the bureaucracy that enacts these polices.
“This is not about being desensitised. It's about being cruel. I think many of these people are indifferent, or worse yet, they like it. If the goal is to discourage people from ever wanting to come to this country, they're achieving that end. All you have to do is open the papers and read about people from other countries.
“They don't even want to come here anymore. I mean, this country, for me, is a disaster. The only hope is that it can't get much worse, but intellectually speaking, I believe it can.”
At its heart Separated is a story about bureaucratic cruelty, he says.
“As my hero, Captain White, says at the end of the film, the sad truth of all of this is that if you want to implement cruel policies, you can always find people who are willing to implement them.
“People are manipulable and many people are just plain cruel. It's not a great advertisement for humanity, I might add.”
Separated is screening as part of the Doc Edge film festival, which kicks off on 25 June.
