final film of the New York Film Academy’s documentary program
Amanda Morales Guerra has rarely seen the light of day since she entered Holyrood Church Santa Cruz almost a year ago. As she fled violence in her native Guatemala and, after years in the US, a deportation order by the Trump administration, priest and activist Luis Barrios had offered her sanctuary in his church in Uptown Manhattan. When I visit Amanda, she is caught up in memories of the inflatable children’s pool in her garden in Long Island, her own slice of the American Dream.