Filmmaker Laura Poitras, speaking at the Venice Film Festival, has described the making of her new short documentary "They're Here" as an urgent response to what she calls a "nightmare" of normalised violence under ICE's immigration crackdown in the United States. The 25-minute film, co-directed with Minneapolis journalist Rachel Lauren Mueller, uses dashcam footage, crowdsourced data and dystopian-style visuals to depict last year's paramilitary-style ICE operation in Minneapolis and the local resistance movement that sprang up against it, aiming to make audiences feel the "terror" of events rather than simply intellectualise them.

Poitras, an Oscar winner for "Citizenfour" and Golden Lion winner for "All the Beauty and the Bloodshed", said the project grew from solidarity with immigrant neighbours in Minneapolis. She cited the resistance as a "great success", noting ICE withdrew roughly 80% of its agents in response to public pushback, while warning that the agency's $70 billion budget and a reported 90,000 detentions in June and July show enforcement remains intense, just with different tactics. The film premieres in Venice's Out of Competition strand, produced by Mueller, Poitras and Yoni Golijov with ARTE France co-producing.