“I come to you as one of our country’s 11 million undocumented immigrants,” Jose Antonio Vargas told the Senate Judiciary Committee over one year ago.  

Starting next month, other members of Congress and Americans across the country will be able to see Vargas’ story as an undocumented immigrant play out on the big screen when his film
“Documented: A film by an illegal immigrant undocumented American” opens in 11 cities, including Washington.  

Documented will open on May 30 at the West End Cinema in Foggy Bottom.  It hits theaters almost one year after it was shown at the documentary film festival AFI Docs in Washington, D.C.  

https://youtu.be/FElg8E16LeU  

After a year of tweaking and editing, the film’s final version is set to open this May and June in New York City, Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Francisco, Berkeley, Sonoma, San Diego, Chicago, Denver and Miami, in addition to D.C.  

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film’s theatrical release qualifies it to be considered for an Academy Award.  Documented will also be shown on CNN this summer.  

Vargas is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and former Washington Post reporter who revealed his undocumented status in a New York Times Magazine article in 2011.  He went on to create a film about his journey, hoping to humanize the immigration issue and alter the terms of the debate itself.  

“We cannot change the politics of this issue until we change the culture of this issue,” Vargas told the audience of a Documented screening at the Newseum on Thursday night.