Laura Poitras Uses Horror Film Language to Expose ICE Raids in New Venice Documentary

Oscar-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras has arrived at the Venice Film Festival with ‘They’re Here’, a stark 25-minute documentary that reimagines immigration enforcement raids as a nightmare unfolding on Minneapolis streets.

Working alongside Minneapolis-based journalist Rachel Lauren Mueller, Poitras uses real footage filtered through the visual language of horror cinema to capture the fear surrounding Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations. The film screened out of competition in the Venice Open section, presented in both English and Spanish.

Rather than the typical documentary approach, Poitras and Mueller deliberately blur the line between journalism and genre filmmaking. They follow Minneapolis residents including someone identified as Edén Villa as residents attempt to evade and document ICE operations. Dashcam footage, ground-level recordings and community material come together to show ordinary city streets transformed into spaces of terror.

The filmmakers follow residents hiding in vehicles, tracking agent movements and witnessing prisoners transported near routine airport activity. It’s a deliberate choice: by channeling the grammar of horror, Poitras and Mueller want audiences to feel the dread that statistics and news bulletins fail to convey.

The project emerged from Mueller’s ground-level documentation in Minneapolis, growing into a collaboration driven by what the filmmakers saw as a gap in mainstream coverage. They wanted to center residents’ voices while showing how communities organized to monitor and resist ICE activity.

For Poitras, this work continues a career-long investigation into surveillance and state power. She won an Oscar for ‘Citizenfour’, her Edward Snowden documentary, and earned the Golden Lion at Venice in 2022 for ‘All the Beauty and the Bloodshed’. With ‘They’re Here’, she trains her lens on systems of power through the eyes of those directly threatened by them.

The documentary challenges what Poitras and Mueller describe as the normalization of state violence. By using horror’s visual vocabulary, they aim to restore urgency to an increasingly routine subject. The title itself ‘They’re Here’ evokes both an unseen threat and the lived reality of residents under surveillance.

ARTE France co-produced the film alongside Mueller, Poitras and Yoni Golijov, with Adam Mellion and Adriana Pacheco as co-producers. It arrives at a Venice festival already saturated with politically charged films exploring immigration, war and human rights.

For Poitras and Mueller, the documentary ultimately documents more than fear. It shows how communities push back when pressure mounts and how collective resistance can challenge even the most powerful institutions.