01
THE FILM
From Academy Award Nominee Robert Bilheimer
Running To Stand Still – Migrants Search For Hope In The Promised Land, is a documentary film about the humanitarian crisis on the U.S. / Mexico border. Running seeks to put a human face on the immigration “issue” by telling heartbreaking and inspiring stories about the migrants themselves—courageous and dignified human beings whose lives stand as a powerful rebuke to a narrative that is fraught with hatred, alarmist rhetoric, and dehumanizing stereotypes.
Running To Stand Still is intended to stimulate a thoughtful, non-hysterical conversation among Americans from all walks of life as to what it truly means to be a “nation of immigrants” at this point in our nation’s history. As such, the film will stress the importance of electing people to political office who understand their role in shaping the character of our democracy for years to come.
The premise of Running is that the true corridors of power are the ones ordinary Americans walk during the course of their everyday lives… In their homes. In classrooms and on college campuses. On Facebook, Twitter, Tik Tok, and Instagram. In churches, temples, and mosques. At town hall meetings. In the newspapers, and on radio and television. These millions of Americans are the “influencers,” the policy makers, the custodians of our future; and it is these Americans, in all their cultural, social, political, and economic diversity, that Running To Stand Still intends to reach.
Running To Stand Still is the much-anticipated follow-up to our 2021 film, Oh Mercy – Searching for Hope in the Promised Land.
02
THE FACTS
Running To Stand Still comes at a time when concerns about immigration are front and center. Millions of people around the world are on the move, forcibly displaced from their homes by powerful forces including gang violence, climate change, and war. At the U.S./Mexico border, all these forces are present in the lives of innocent, vulnerable people whose sheer numbers, in and of themselves, are cause for alarm. In August 2023 alone, the Department of Health and Human Services received more than 13,000 unaccompanied migrant children, an average of
431 per day.
In 2023, an astonishing 520,000 migrants embarked on the journey north. Among the “highlights” of this journey are a three-day trek through the Darien Gap, a 66-mile strip of jungle connecting Panama to Mexico that is one of the most dangerous and forbidding pieces of real estate on the planet; and a journey across Mexico on the roof of a freight train known as “La Bestia,” or “El Tren de la Muerte,” The Train of Death.
According to the Internal Rescue Committee, as of August, 2024, over 1,000,000 migrants are stuck in Mexico waiting to enter the U.S. legally.
03
THE FACES
Participants in Running To Stand Still
Running To Stand Still is constructed as a series of interconnected vignettes and stories as told by the migrants themselves. Supporting the migrants’ stories are interviews with volunteers, religious leaders, doctors, clinicians, social workers, lawyers, journalists, and scholars.
These and other individuals will give the film its narrative rhythm. Their thoughts and statements—either on camera or in voice-overs—will be brief and sharply to the point. These narrative guides for Running are individuals who have spent the better part of their lives advocating for the helpless, the victimized, and the dispossessed.
Among those who will help drive the film’s narrative are:
Abraham Barberi, Leader of One Mission Ministries in Brownsville, Texas and Matamoros
Dylan Corbett, Executive Director, HOPE Border Institute
Michael DeBruhl, Director, Sacred Heart Church Shelter, El Paso, Texas
Dr. Brian Elmore, ER Doctor and co-founder of Clinica Hope in Juárez, Mexico Pastor
Ruben Garcia, Executive Director of Annunciation House in El Paso, Texas
Ms. Lourdes Gonzalez, Volunteer who runs a shelter in Reynosa, Mexico
Gail Kocourek, Green Valley Samaritans, Tucson, AZ
Sister Norma Pimentel, Executive Director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley
Bishop Mark Seitz, Catholic Diocese of El Paso, Texas
Jesús de la Torre, Research Fellow at the HOPE Border Institute
