Still Voices Short Film Festival

Águilas / Eagles

Along the scorching southern desert border in Arizona, it is estimated that only one out of every five missing migrants are ever found. This film is the story of one group of searchers, the Aguilas del Desierto, themselves largely immigrant Latinos. Once a month these volunteers—construction workers, gardeners, domestic laborers by trade—set out to recover missing loved ones referred to them by word of mouth, phone calls, or Facebook message. Amidst rising political repression and cartel violence, as well as the eternal difficulties of travel in the Sonoran Desert, the Aguilas carry out their solemn task.

Director Bio

Kristy Guevara-Flanagan, Director, Producer, Writer. Kristy has been making documentary and experimental films for nearly two decades, starting with a 1999 experimental documentary about a blow-up doll (which screened at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among other venues). Her first feature-length film, Going on 13 (2009), covers four years in the lives of four adolescent girls; it premiered at Tribeca and was broadcast on PBS.

Maite Zubiaurre, Co-Director, Producer, Writer. Maite Zubiaurre has a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Columbia University and is a Professor in the Humanities at UCLA. She holds a joint appointment in the Department of Germanic Languages and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. Before joining UCLA, Maite Zubiaurre taught at UT Austin,UNAM (Mexico), ITAM (México), and USC.