In 1994, a Clinton administration initiative forced migrants to take deadlier routes through the Sonoran Desert to cross from Mexico into Arizona. Starting in 2016, the Trump administration pursued even more intense policing measures at the border, resulting in the arrests of volunteers who provided food, water and shelter to migrants. The short documentary USA v Scott chronicles how, in 2018, a geography professor and volunteer humanitarian aid worker named Scott Warren was arrested under a law that had previously been used to target smugglers, and faced the potential of a 20-year prison sentence. Following Scott as he continues to help migrants while preparing for his trial, the film ponders the boundaries between country and country, and law and morality.
Directors: Ora DeKornfeld, Isabel Castro
Producers: Marie-Hélène Carleton, Micah Garen
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Family life
One family’s harrowing escape from postwar Vietnam, told in a poignant metaphor
10 minutes
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Fairness and equality
Visit the small Texas community that lives in the shadow of SpaceX launches
14 minutes
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War and peace
A frontline soldier’s moving account of the fabled ‘Christmas truce’ of 1914
12 minutes
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Bioethics
What a 1970 experiment reveals about the possibility and perils of ‘head transplants’
6 minutes
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History of technology
Replicating Shakespearean-era printing brings its own dramas and comedy
19 minutes
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Animals and humans
The wild tale of a young animal keeper, an angry tiger and a torn circle net
10 minutes
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Technology and the self
Why single Chinese women are freezing their eggs in California
24 minutes
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Beauty and aesthetics
Can you see music in this painting? How synaesthesia fuelled Kandinsky’s art
10 minutes
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The ancient world
Petty squabbles and bloody battles – the life of an ancient Roman soldier
18 minutes