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Well-Founded Fear
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From the Filmmakers
Asylum is an institution that clearly turns the spotlight back on us as Americans -- how we deal with others in need reveals fundamental truths about ourselves and our institutions, and cuts to the core of our commitment to human rights. Well-Founded Fear examines the meaning and the nature of political asylum in this country today, both from the inside -- from the experience of people whose lives are marked by it -- and from the wider perspective of the US as a nation.
At the level of public discourse, the film is about America's relationship to its ideals and to the complexity of living up to an ideal. It's about the enormous disparities among the countries of the world, our ambivalence toward new arrivals, and about the ways foreigners become us, Americans, part of this nation of immigrants.
At a personal level it's about how easy it is to take on the critical and distancing role of judge, how ephemeral one's own compassion can be, how hard it is to be fair, and how nearly impossible really to know the truth.
As we watch asylum officers struggle to balance sympathy with good sense and tough-mindedness, we may also realize that their decisions mirror the larger choices about our role in the world that the United States must make.
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