We’re very excited about the premiere today of the documentary film, The Least of These, a documentary film about the Hutto detention center at the 2009 South by Southwest Film Festival (SXSW) in Austin, Texas.

If you can’t make it down to Austin, you can watch it in its entirety for free online on SnagFilms, and it will also be available to educational institutions through Cinema Guild.

The film, co-produced and co-directed by Clark Lyda and Jesse Lyda and produced by Marcy Garriott, chronicles the ACLU’s successful legal challenge to the prisonlike conditions at a Texas detention center where immigrant children and their families were held.

The film questions the government’s assumption that imprisonment of immigrant children and their families is a reasonable solution to keeping families together and explores the role — and limits — of community and legal activism in bringing about change. We hope that the film brings to the forefront the need for practical, realistic immigration policy, not draconian methods that are harming vulnerable kids.

The Least of These plays today, Wednesday and Friday. Movie times, ticket prices and locations can be found on the SXSW website.

There will be a Q & A after each screening featuring the directors, Barbara Hines of the University of Texas School of Law, Michelle Brané of the Women's Refugee Commission and former Hutto detainees.

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