In the summer of 2018, Arian Moayed was asking a question: How does a deportation proceeding actually work?
He started reaching out to immigration lawyers, talking to them about their cases and asking to read court transcripts. This led him to Richard Hanus, who shared the dramatic and remarkable case of Elizabeth Keathley and her family.
Arian started reading the transcripts of her case - a few pages in he was captivated by a complicated conversation about whether there would be a translator in the courtroom. Then, he read the DHS lawyer ask “Would you like a tissue?” As an Iranian immigrant who came to the U.S. as a kid and often translated for his parents, the high-stakes conversation about translation and the emotional implications of that question struck deep chords with him.
Richard and the Keathley family agreed that Arian and director Lee Sunday Evans could use the transcripts as a script. Arian and Lee edited hundreds of pages of transcripts into a riveting 90-minute story that captures the strange mix of banal details and extremely high stakes that play out in immigration court. In January 2019, their non-profit company Waterwell premiered a live re-enactment of the transcripts as a theater piece in an active courtroom on the 17th floor of the Thurgood Marshall Courthouse in downtown NYC - the seat of the 2nd Circuit, U.S. Court of Appeals.
Due to popular demand, the play was performed around NYC to sold-out houses in 2019 and early 2020. When Lee and Arian were given an opportunity to turn the play into a film, they didn’t change any of the dialogue - everything spoken by the characters is taken directly from the court transcripts of Elizabeth’s case.