A documentary on migration issues that was filmed in Brownsville last year will premier virtually this month.
“Oh Mercy: searching for hope in the promised land” is a documentary by Bob Bilheimer, a documentary filmmaker from Upstate New York, about thousands of refugees, migrants, and asylum seekers from Central America awaiting court dates and immigration hearings in the U.S.—many for well over a year now, with no end in sight, the website reads.
“It is just who I am, I am a documentary filmmaker who cares deeply about global human rights issues and I don’t have another answer except that I’ve been doing this all my life in a sense,” Billheimer said in a previous interview. “I care about other human beings, I grew up in a background where my mother was a teacher who specialized in teaching English as a second language … so she worked with refugees when I was a young man.”
The documentary will premier virtually on Feb. 25 and will be hosted by the Refugee Services of Texas. Following the documentary, there will be a panel discussion featuring Sister Norma Pimentel, executive director of Catholic Family Charities of the Rio Grande Valley; Oh Mercy Director Robert Bilheimer; Anjelica Xolxol, an asylum seeker from Guatemala and a special guest to be announced soon.
“Increasingly desperate and discouraged, they are huddled in squalid camps and detention centers on both sides of the Rio Grande, which for several hundred miles serves as a natural border between Mexico and the United States,” the description for the documentary reads.
“These women, men and children fight hard, every day, to maintain their dignity in the face of powerful forces— including gang violence, natural disasters, and climate change— that have displaced them from their homes and turned them into a mobile population of vulnerable human beings who nobody wants. Unable to enter the United States for their legal proceedings because of a policy known as the ‘Migration Protection Protocols’ (MPP), or ‘Stay In Mexico,’ these refugees, migrants and asylum seekers represent a sad and embarrassing chapter in American history.”
The panel discussion will be moderated by Development Director, Ashley Faye of the Refugee Services of Texas. The premiere is free to attend and open to anyone who wishes to join.
To register, visit “Running to stand still” on Facebook.
