Jason Sondhi
The writing and directing duo of Sam and David Cutler-Kreutz are back on Short of the Week for a second time with their pulled-from-the-headlines drama, A Lien. Featured just over a year ago for Flounder, and with a third short currently starring on the festival circuit after an SXSW premiere, the brothers have, in a very short window of time, established themselves as major film talents. What the pair have demonstrated is a prodigious level of technical excellence in executing adrenalized thriller scenarios which they marry to social issue flashpoints. Flounder tackled sports hazing rituals, and A Lien centers on the inhumane system of US immigration enforcement.
The film drops us straight away into the harried and hectic perspective of a family preparing for a green card hearing. Running behind schedule on their way to the meeting, young daughter in tow, a Hispanic man and his white American wife are frantically coordinating paperwork and going over final details. The fact that they are on the verge of being late raises the anxiety level, but the audience gets the sense that their flustered natures would remain regardless, a consequence of the stakes — their ability to remain a family — being so high. Little do they, or we, know how much higher those stakes are about to get…
William Martinez stars as Oscar, a father and husband hoping to get through a stressful green card interview.
It is fair to be skeptical of the “issue”-based plot of A Lien. I am not a fan of pun titles, so the film already had a mark against it before my initial viewing, and it is undeniable that the surge of activism that emerged from the summer of 2020 has produced a lot of shorts that confuse political fervor for strong dramatic storytelling. Immigration in particular, being the fulcrum of global politics at this moment, has received much attention, with excellent shorts like Green Water and I Have No Tears, and I Must Cry featuring on the site over the last couple of years. What do a pair of white New Jersey brothers have to contribute to this subject?
The first half of the film does not necessarily reveal an answer. The family navigates a jaded and cold bureaucracy which, if infuriating, is familiar. The Cutler-Kreutz’s shoot this in an aggressive fashion which is novel, employing lots of quick, handheld photography. However, while I understand the impetus, I found the scenes busy to the point of distraction. Only the inherent charisma and chemistry of the actors rescued the vital emotional connection I had to the characters from dissipating under the deluge of music video-style cuts.
So, while I applaud the attempt to make bureaucracy visually-gripping, A Lien earns its stripes in its second half. Spoilers ahead.
The directorial duo “tried as hard as [they] could to bring the scenes together in a ‘live’ way”.
The turning point of the film is to go full thriller, as the couple’s green card interview is revealed as a sting operation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to lure families in with the promise of naturalization, only to scoop them up for deporting. Far-fetched to imagine this happening to the spouses of US citizens? Not at all, unfortunately. The busy style of the film kicks itself up another gear, but now we don’t mind—the quick cuts, darting text messages, and paranoid cinematography are no longer mirroring fretful characters but fully panicked ones. As an audience, we’re so swept up in fear/concern/outrage that our attention is rapt as the husband attempts to escape detection and shield his daughter from authorities who patrol the hallways like a predator pack. Like the buzzed about Netflix feature Rebel Ridge, which just dropped this week and managed to turn the administrative process of civil asset forfeiture into the premise of a popular entertainment film, the Cutler-Kreutz’s show that otherwise dry stories of documents and procedure are not antithetical to gripping storytelling.
A Lien had a relatively modest festival run before coming online as a Vimeo Staff Pick and we now lend our support in introducing more viewers to this skillful and engaging work. You’ll probably see the brothers on this site again next year as their previously-mentioned short, Trapped, is busy picking up awards at stops like SXSW and Palm Springs currently. While we’d like to see the filmmakers stay in shorts for even longer, the excellence of their craft and their adroitness at facilitating tension would suggest talents that are ready to try a bigger canvas. So, it’s no surprise that the pair have told us they are hard at work on their debut feature.