Fresh off its win for Outstanding Cine Latino Documentary at the Sacramento International Film Festival, “Little L.A.” continues to make an impact, raising important questions during a period of heightened attention to immigration and asylum issues in the United States. We sat down with the film’s director, LMU School of Film and Television Professor Liz Werner, who alongside co-director Carlos Montaner, has crafted an intimate, quietly powerful portrait of immigrants who have been deported or “self‑deported” from the U.S. to Mexico City in search of stability and belonging. A Bronx native and Annenberg Fellow, Werner’s work includes the feature “Waking Karma,” the TV drama “RPM Miami,” and the award-winning short “Into the Uncanny Valley.” We spoke with her about the origins of “Little L.A.,” the stories that drew her in, and what she hopes audiences take away from watching the film.
LMU: What inspired you and your co-director to explore the world of deported Dreamers?
Professor Werner: We initially started working on the project in 2018 when I heard an NPR story about this neighborhood in Mexico City that people were referring to as “Little L.A.” During that time of anti-immigration, a lot of deported Dreamers were ending up in this neighborhood in Mexico City, where people who grew up in the United States without paperwork and then got deported would find work at one of the many English language call centers. I mentioned it to my co-director, Carlos, and he immediately said, “that has to be a TV show.” We initially wrote it as a pilot, but the ultimate response was it was a bit too political, so we shelved it until interest reemerged years later.
LMU: “Little L.A.” also received an SFTV grant. What did that mean to you as a filmmaker?
Professor Werner: I am so grateful to Dean Moore and to SFTV because even though I was a newer faculty member in my first year at LMU at the time, I decided to apply for an SFTV grant to do research for the pilot. No matter how much research you do online, there’s nothing like actually seeing a place, talking to people, and being in the reality of it. I feel so lucky to have this level of support, not just for writing, but for doing research for a writing project, which honestly has never happened to me before. I also feel strongly aligned with the social justice mission of LMU. In a time where there’s a lot of fear and people are questioning what they can say or can’t say, I also just appreciate the bravery of the school in supporting our project.
LMU: How did you find your subjects for “Little L.A.,” and what was that process like of building a rapport with them once you arrived in Mexico City?
Professor Werner: Thanks to the SFTV grant, we were able to pay a fixer – a producer on the ground who has connections to different communities. We worked with Montserrat Bustos Cardona who’s amazing, and for the five days we were there, she set up 10 interviews for us. What you see in the documentary is just a fraction of the people whom we talked to while we were there.
In terms of gaining people’s trust, we shot everything on an iPhone with a very minimal microphone, so we didn’t have the sense of being a huge camera crew, which was really helpful for people feeling comfortable. I think that these are stories unfortunately that people don’t always get a chance to tell that contain a lot of trauma, a lot of life-changing experiences, and we found that people had not always had the opportunity to tell their stories.
LMU: What surprised you most about your filming experience for “Little L.A.”?
Professor Werner: We were surprised about how happy people were to talk to us. A lot of them had to work really, really hard for many years, and didn’t necessarily get the benefit of therapy or someone to listen. A few of the people we talked to asked us for copies of their interviews so they could share with their kids later on, so that was surprising.
Another thing that really hit us was learning about life circumstances let’s say, a dysfunctional family or abuse within the family, which really piled on top of immigration issues. For instance, Nayelly was facing abuse in her family and didn’t have her paperwork. That would have been a horrible thing to face no matter what, but because of her immigration status, her decision to go back to Mexico to escape the abuse became a permanent one. A lot of what we ended up talking to people about were not only immigration issues, but also distances or issues within their families that had been compounded on top of these other challenges that they faced.
LMU: Tell us more about your long-standing collaboration with co-director Carlos Montaner.
Professor Werner: I started out as a screenwriter – that was my primary activity – and Carlos still works primarily as a cinematographer. In our collaboration together, we have a natural division of tasks. I will work more with the story and actors on set while he’ll oversee lighting and visuals. We check in with each other, and then we also develop our stories together, generally at the outline phase. And then I’ll do a draft, and we’ll go back and forth on revisions. On “Little L.A.”, Carlos had a lot of insight on the production side since he has directed documentaries himself. I came up with the questions and was the person conducting the interviews most of the time. Then editorially, it’s much more 50/50, with us selecting footage that we thought would create a compelling story.
LMU: What do you hope viewers take away from the film?
Professor Werner: As we were going through this process, we decided that our central theme was belonging. You can belong to your family, you can belong to your friends, to your community. I think I have often taken for granted that I belong to my country or the citizenship that I have. But that is not something everyone can take for granted. We met a lot of returnees who have often not felt that they belonged in either the U.S. or in Mexico but have found a sense of belonging with each other.
I hope someone seeing this documentary will take away a sense of humanity from the people that we talked to. Particularly, Edwin, who represents the immigrant who did commit crimes and go to jail. When this whole immigration debate first lit on fire, that was the category of people that was very easy to dehumanize. I still get tears in my eyes listening to his interview because he is a person who served his time, who paid for his crimes, and who found such an incredible life of service with taking care of kids, educating children and helping them to be creative. I really hope that people who watch this documentary see the humanity in all categories of immigrant and all immigrant statuses.
LMU: As a professor, how does working directly with emerging filmmakers influence your own creative practice and what excites you most about training the next generation of storytellers?
Professor Werner: I really love it. For me, it’s inspiring. Sometimes when people have been working in the entertainment industry for a long time, they can become a little cynical, so it’s so inspiring for me to get to work with the next generation of filmmakers who are just excited about telling their stories, and also sometimes a little more flexible and ready to do things in new ways. I’ve been a screenwriting professor for a while, and it’s a great way for me to stay in touch with the tools of my craft. I really try to hone my own craft, bring that to the classroom, and then vice versa, see what works for my students, and sometimes apply it to my own work.
When I see something like “KPop Demon Hunters,” and the amazing ideas coming from our very recent alums, I’m excited by how SFTV is climbing in the rankings, and that so many grads are working. I am thrilled to be helping people tell their stories better and to see that translated to the screen.