A Virtual Film Screening of the Long Walk of Carlos Guerrero and a Panel Discussion on November 5, 2024
Mass migration of people in search of better lives is one of the defining issues of our time. Whether fleeing war, gang violence, natural disasters, poverty, millions of people are on the move within countries, across borders, and across seas.
The numbers are so big and the headlines so mind-numbing that sometimes we lose sight of—and, hence, empathy for—the individual people who, for the most part, are simply seeking the kind of peace and opportunity that the rest of us take for granted.
Filmmaker (and Tällberg Foundation colleague) Joseph Mathew-Varghese set out to remedy this when he made “The Long Walk of Carlos Guerrero”. This full-length film is based on the real story of a migrant who left the safety of life in the United States and then struggled to return. The audience was invited to join us for a viewing and a live, on-line conversation, moderated by Andrew Selee, President of the Migration Policy Institute, and with Celina de Sola, co-founder of Glasswing, a community-based education and public health initiative in El Salvador, and May Bulman, journalist and investigations editor at Lighthouse Reports.
Joseph Mathew, Filmmaker
The Filmmaker Joseph Mathew-Varghese was born and brought up in Kerala, India. After he immigrated to the U.S. in 1994, he eschewed a career in Finance to pursue a lifelong covert dream of becoming a photographer and filmmaker. After a brief stint as a photojournalist, he ventured into long-form story-telling. He completed his first feature documentary, “The Last Season: The Life and Demolition of Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium” in 2003. His second documentary, “Crossing Arizona”, examines immigration through the lives and actions of the people living along the Arizona–Sonora border. It premiered at the Sundance Film and was awarded the One Future Prize at the Munich Film Festival. In 2009, he completed his first narrative film, “Bombay Summer”.Set within the youth culture of contemporary India, it subtly reveal show rapid modernization is affecting a fiercely traditional society. Besides “The Long Walk of Carlos Guerrero”, Joseph is working on a feature documentary “A Border Crossed Land”, the story of a Native American community that got separated by the creation and militarization of the US-Mexico border.
Andrew Selee, Moderator
Andrew is President of the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), a global nonpartisan institution that seeks to improve immigration and integration policies through fact-based research, opportunities for learning and dialogue, and the development of new ideas to address complex policy questions, a position he assumed in 2017. He also chairs MPI Europe’s Administrative Council. Dr. Selee’s research focuses on migration globally, with a special emphasis on immigration policies in the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean. He is the author of several books, including, most recently, Vanishing Frontiers: The Forces Driving Mexico and the United States Together (PublicAffairs, 2018) and What Should Think Tanks Do? A Strategic Guide to Policy Impact (Stanford University Press, 2013).
May Bulman
May is an investigations editor at Lighthouse Reports, where she coordinates teams of journalists and carries out her own in-depth reporting on investigations with a focus on borders and migration. She was previously social affairs correspondent for The Independent in the UK, where she gained recognition for her reporting on asylum and migration. She has received multiple awards for her reporting on migration and modern slavery.
May was recently a guest on the New Thinking for a New World podcast in the episode Europe’s Shameful Dumping where she discusses Europe’s funding of North African countries to abandon refugees in the Sahara.
Celina de Sola
Celina is a Salvadoran social entrepreneur, co-founder and president of Glasswing International, an organization founded in El Salvador that addresses the root causes and consequences of poverty and violence through public education, health, and community empowerment initiatives in 15 countries. Glasswing catalyzes unlikely collaborations between government, business, and community groups – building a new culture of shared responsibility and fostering long-term sustainable change. Celina has over 25 years of experience in international development and social change. She’s worked as a consultant for international organizations; was a crisis interventionist for Latino immigrants in the US; and subsequently, she worked for Americares, leading humanitarian responses in complex emergencies including: Liberia, Darfur, Afghanistan, Iraq, as well as the tsunami in Indonesia. It was through this humanitarian work that Celina saw the impact of trauma-informed care on families in crisis, a recognition that has since informed program development at Glasswing.
