The Cedar Presents
They’re Here - Short Film Screening
a film by Laura Poitras and Rachel Lauren MuellerWednesday, November 4, 2026
Doors 7PM | Film 7:30PM | Q&A 8PM
Seated | All Ages
ABOUT THIS FILM
They're Here is a horror film that follows Edén Villa (a pseudonym) and anonymous Minneapolis residents as they evade and resist the paramilitary occupation of their city. Told in the tradition of dystopian cinema, They're Here is set in a winter landscape where masked agents abduct children, residents travel in trunks, shackled prisoners are loaded onto airplanes within eyesight of vacationers, and bicyclists track the movements of an invading force. Directed by Academy Award and Golden Lion-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras and award-winning Minneapolis-based filmmaker Rachel Lauren Mueller.
Synopsis
They’re Here is a horror film that follows Edén Villa (a pseudonym) and anonymous Minneapolis residents as they evade and resist the paramilitary occupation of their city. Told in the tradition of dystopian cinema, They’re Here is set in a winter landscape where masked agents abduct children, residents travel in trunks, shackled prisoners are loaded onto airplanes within eyesight of vacationers, and bicyclists track the movements of an invading force.
Documenting the behind-the-scenes movement against the 3-month occupation by ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) of Minneapolis, where thousands of immigrants were abducted, They’re Here uses dash cam footage, crowdsourced data visualizations, counter-surveillance and original on-the-ground footage to create a nonfiction portrait of resistance.
ICE continues its abductions across the United States, with a stated goal of deporting 1 million people per year. The agency’s budget is over $70 billion.
Directed by Academy Award® and Golden Lion winning filmmaker Laura Poitras and award-winning Minneapolis-based filmmaker Rachel Lauren Mueller.
They’re Here / TRT 25 minutes / USA / 2026
Laura Poitras
Laura Poitras is an Academy Award®, Pulitzer Prize, and Golden Lion winning filmmaker and journalist. Her 2025 film, Cover-Up, premiered at the Venice Film Festival, and was nominated for BAFTA, DGA and Emmy awards. Her previous film, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, won the Golden Lion for best film at the Venice Film Festival, and was nominated for an Academy Award®. Her film CITIZENFOUR won an Academy Award® for Best Documentary, along with awards from DGA, BAFTA, and Independent Spirit Award. Laura received the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for her reporting on the National Security Agency’’s global mass surveillance programs. Her film about the U.S. war and occupation of Iraq, My Country, My Country, was nominated for an Academy Award®. In 2006, she was placed on a terrorist watchlist because of her work documenting post-9/11 America. In 2015 she successfully sued the U.S. government to obtain her classified FBI files.
Rachel Lauren Mueller
Rachel Lauren Mueller is a documentary filmmaker and investigative journalist whose work examines power and identity. Her films and reporting have appeared in The New York Times, PBS, and Al Jazeera. Her short documentary 8 Days at Ware (Double Exposure, 2022), alongside her New York Times investigation into abuse cover-ups in a juvenile detention center, was recognized by the Dart Center for Excellence in Coverage of Trauma, shortlisted for a Livingston Award, and received multiple honors for investigative reporting and documentary. Her debut feature, The Quiet Part (post-production), will explore how extremism becomes normalized through the arrival of a pagan white supremacist group in a rural Midwestern town.