Academy Award®-winning filmmaker Errol Morris confronts one of the 
darkest chapters in recent American 
history: family separations. Based on NBC News Political and National Correspondent Jacob Soboroff’s book, Separated: Inside an American Tragedy, Morris merges bombshell interviews with government officials and artful narrative vignettes tracing one migrant 
family’s plight. The extraordinary cruelty of this political calculation was not a byproduct of the surging immigration rhetoric, but rather its purpose. By inflicting such unspeakable trauma on the families—the majority of them from the Central American countries Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras—the 
government aimed to deter others from traveling to the U.S. seeking asylum. With searing incisiveness, Errol Morris, the Academy Award®-winning filmmaker behind seminal non-fiction works including “The Fog of War” and “The Thin Blue Line,” probes at this bleak chapter in recent American history by merging hard-hitting interviews with government officials who were both 
alarmed by or complicit with these policy decisions, as well with artful narrative vignettes that immerse the viewer in the migrants’ plight as they journey across the border. The resulting film is a devastatingly moving and thoroughly researched exposé of how several high-ranking Trump Administration officials aided and abetted the separation of toddlers and
young children from their parents. By the summer of 2018 Trump administration’s hard-line stance on immigration resulted in a series of devastating policies that affected thousands of people, many of which continue to have shattering repercussions for some of the country’s most vulnerable populations. Against this backdrop, audiences can begin to absorb the U.S. government’s role in developing and implementing policies that have kept over 1,300 children without confirmed reunifications years later, according to the Department of Homeland Security. NBC News Political and National Correspondent Jacob Soboroff joins us for a frank conversation on the past, present and future of immigration policy, possibility that separated family’s can be or will ever be re-united and whether the endless rancor will ever be put aside long enough for an honest conversation on immigration.
For more go to: msnbc.com/Separated
About the subject – Jacob Soboroff (Journalist/Author/Executive Producer) is a Political and National Correspondent for NBC News and the author of the New York Times best seller and Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist “Separated: Inside an American Tragedy.” For his reporting on the Trump administration’s child separation policy, he received the Walter Cronkite Award for Individual Achievement by a National Journalist and the Hillman Prize for Broadcast Journalism. He is also the recipient of a Ruben Salazar Journalism Award from the California Chicano News Media Association, and in 2022 was nominated for a News and Documentary Emmy® Award for his reporting from Haiti. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife Nicole Cari and their two children.
About the filmmaker – Roger Ebert has said, “After twenty years of reviewing films, I haven’t found another filmmaker who intrigues me more…Errol Morris is like a magician, and as great a filmmaker as Hitchcock or Fellini.” Errol Morris’ films have won many awards, including an Oscar for “The Fog of War,” the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival for “A Brief History of Time,” the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival for “Standard Operating Procedure,” and the Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America for “The Thin Blue Line.” His films have been honored by the National Society of Film Critics and the National Board of Review. Morris’ work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Roger Ebert, a champion of Morris’ work, called his first film, “Gates of Heaven,” one of the ten best films of all time. The Guardian listed him as one of the ten most important film directors in the world. Morris is the author of two New York Times bestsellers, “Believing is Seeing” and “A Wilderness of Error,” and is a regular contributor to The New York Times opinion pages and Op-Docs series. His most recent book, “The Ashtray,” was published in 2018. Morris has directed over 1000 television commercials, including campaigns for Apple, Levi’s, Nike, Target, Citibank, and Miller High Life. He has directed short films for the 2002 and 2007 Academy Awards, ESPN, and many charitable and political organizations. In 2001, Morris won an Emmy for Photobooth, a commercial for PBS. Morris has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a MacArthur Fellowship. In 2007, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and was a graduate student at Princeton University and the University of California-Berkeley. He has received the Columbia Journalism Award and honorary degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Brandeis University, and Middlebury College. Morris lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with his wife, Julia Sheehan, an art historian, andtheir French Bulldog, Esmeralda.their French Bulldog, Esmeralda. For more go to: errolmorris.com
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“It’s a story of dehumanisation, children in cages, and the blurting, vote-craving policy-making of government by id — and it’s shattering to experience.” – Philip De Semlyen, Time Out
“The cruelty was the point. In documenting Trump’s policy of family separation, Separated shows the route by which the US crossed over into darkness. It is an exacting, harrowing and quietly furious film.” – Xan Brooks, Guardian
““Separated” finds Morris back in “The Fog of War” mode: angry, engaged and determined to expose an injustice too monumental to be ignored.” – Peter Debruge, Variety
“Kudos to Morris and Soboroff for telling the story, which is hopefully never repeated.” – Jason Delgado, Film Threat
“White’s fire, and his soaring warnings about how political sycophants willing to effect a policy like family separation will always exist, are powerful enough.” – Ben Kenigsberg, New York Times
“It’s illuminating in the most chilling way.” – Matt Zoller Seitz, RogerEbert.com
“Nonetheless, what we glean from the totality of the interviews and research, and Morris’ well-honed style of coalescing information, is damning enough.” – Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times