Cinema has an undeniable power to generate empathy, connecting audiences with powerful stories and experiences both familiar and unfamiliar. When these stories are told with appropriate care, the results can be transformative. In this conversation, Set Hernandez, a filmmaker, writer, and community organizer, shares how they use film to illuminate the experiences of the undocumented communities of which they are a part, and whose lives are rarely depicted with nuance. They also discuss making the film you want to make while still keeping the audience in mind, and ultimately, the healing power of authentic representation. 

Kate Blair: What drew you to pursue filmmaking, and what were your beginnings in the craft? 

Set Hernandez: Well, first of all, I remember when I first got a contract in 2020 that referred to me as an artist. I think there's a level of imposter syndrome that I still probably am in the pursuit of overcoming, just because it feels like such a farfetched thing to associate myself with. It's just a very difficult field to be in.

So much of my origin story around being an artist also probably comes from a place of longing or desire to be witnessed or to be understood as a person, and so much of it is also tied to my undocumented experience.

When I was in high school, my teachers would share films that made me understand the world around me and the world that I don't have access to. That really instilled in me the power of cinema, for lack of a better cliche.

Around the time that I was eighteen or nineteen, I was trying to look for a sense of connection to make sense of my experience being undocumented. I came across the filmmaking of Tam Tran, an undocumented community organizer and filmmaker. When I was entering college and becoming involved in student organizing in the immigrant youth movement around 2010, Tam had just passed away, and that was around the time that I was introduced to one of her short films called Lost and Found. That was the first film where I came across the experience of an undocumented person who happens to be Filipino like myself.

This desire and inspiration that I got from Tam's work made me want to articulate my lived experience, so that an eighteen-year-old me wouldn't feel lonely again in the experience of being undocumented and othered in many ways.

Kate: As both a filmmaker and an organizer, do you feel like those modes inform one another?

Set: As I navigate the world that I live in now as an artist, more and more, I am convinced that it's not so much that filmmaking and organizing intertwine, it is the fact that filmmaking is organizing. When you bring people together around a film, that is organizing. I've organized many conferences and many events for my community, and so much of it starts with a draft of a plan. Typically, in cinema, that is called a screenplay, and you organize people around this vision to bring this campaign to life.

Then, once the film is finished, the organizing is on the audience side when you bring people to watch a movie together and give them a shared feeling, a shared understanding of something. When we share something with each other, I think those are the building blocks of how organizing happens.

In the context I have historically lived in as a documentary filmmaker, there's this idea of the impact campaign. An impact producer is someone who brings a film to the communities that work on the themes and issues that the film is about. Often, this is where the organizing is really perceived in film, in distribution, in making sure that the themes of the film reach powers that be. But I argue that the organizing aspect of filmmaking doesn't begin when the film is finished. It begins the moment you think of an idea, you talk to a producer about it, you talk to a friend about it, you ask someone for feedback, you get people to root for you. You get people, the money, the resources to bring your film to life. Filmmaking is organizing.

Kate: I've never heard it put that way, but I feel like that's really true. I'm curious what process you use to prevent a film from being extractive. You’ve answered it in part already, but maybe we can talk specifically about Unseen, which follows Pedro, a blind and undocumented person, on his path to becoming a social worker. How did you work with Pedro and the crew to make sure that the film was accessible from the start?

Set: If we live our lives in relationality with each other from this place that is not extractive, but rather from a place that is rooted in values and common humanity, I feel like that's an important way to think about how we can work as artists, because so often the artistic world is using the narratives of those that are pushed out of these spaces and these systems, commodifying their experiences for the gaze of the elite.

My practice as a filmmaker is informed by theoretical frameworks that are rooted in organizing rather than filmmaking itself. Some of the texts that have really shaped my filmmaking are Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paolo Freire, and Decolonizing Methodologies by Linda Tuhiwai-Smith. Decolonizing Methodologies is about ethnography, in a way that decolonizes the practice. Pedagogy of the Oppressed is this framework of popular education where the most directly impacted people are the ones that get to shape the ways that movements around them are led, and people in positions of power stop thinking of themselves simply as allies, but rather the shared liberation that they have together.

When Pedro and I first started filming, I was very wary of imposing on him the experiences that I've had from other media makers. My goal from the very beginning was that if ever we get so lucky to bring this film to life, I want Pedro to be able to tell me like, “Set, you understand who I am. You made a film that captures the essence of my humanity.”

But the only way Pedro will be able to do that is if he can access the film to begin with, and this is where the notion of accessibility, and more specifically, the notion of equitable enjoyment, really emerged in our process — making sure that if ever this film comes to life, non-blind/sighted people do not get to enjoy the film more than blind people and the blind protagonists at the heart of the film.

We brought on undocumented filmmakers, disabled, and blind film practitioners. We also have queer, trans filmmakers in our team. The more that our film reflected the world around us, the world that Pedro is surrounded by, the more that we really got to make sure that this film is as reflective of Pedro's lived reality as possible, which then allowed us to reach audiences that we would have never thought we could reach.

Kate: Were there other learnings about access in film you will carry with you to other projects?

Set: There's a notion that accessibility is for films about people with disabilities, when really accessibility should be for every film. I think so often, we underestimate the interest of certain communities to find their stories reflected in the films that they experience and watch. One of the biggest takeaways that we have from this study that was made about Unseen is that non-disabled people underestimate the interest of disabled people to watch cinema by two to one. And the reason that we don't get to enjoy accessible films is because people with disabilities are rarely included in these conversations around what kinds of films get distributed and shared with the world. 

Similarly, undocumented folks are often thought of as the subjects of stories, the most sensationalized, dramatic portrayals of what it means to be a traumatized immigrant in the United States, without making sense of the fact that our communities are also audiences. We want to watch films that reflect our humanity. Of course, sometimes that includes trauma and sadness and fear and anxiety and grief. But beyond that, we are people that love, we are people that hope, we are people that aspire for respite, for possibilities for ourselves.

The biggest learning that I've had from making Unseen is not just to think about the process of making the film, but really think about who I'm making the film for, and how can I make sure that as I am bringing the film to life, I am thinking about the best ways to reach these audiences. 

As I have learned from mentors like Karin Chien, Carlos Gutiérrez, Distribution Advocates, the writings of Jon Reiss, Brian Newman, folks that are in the conversations around film distribution, it's really about knowing who your audience is, and not thinking of your audience as an afterthought. Not so much making the film for them, because I think it's also about making the film that's true to your values and true to your vision, but that I am thinking ahead of time, these are the people I want to watch this film, how can I make sure that I reach them? 

And more often than not, that should include accessibility because a film doesn't just have to be about disability for a disabled person to be interested in it, just as much as, for example, an undocumented immigrant can resonate with the experience of a US citizen.

Kate: Let’s talk about that study, which you shared with us, and there’s just astounding information in there, so I was wondering how you felt about it?

Set: The study was done in October through November 2024. It was election season, a time when we were receiving all this vitriol about undocumented people, about trans people, about disabled people in more ways than one.

Nevertheless, when they watched the film, they found a sense of optimism and hope and pride. In particular, for undocumented folks to feel proud of who they are, even though the world is telling them to be ashamed, to fear the lived realities that they are in, for our film to be a conduit to this, it's like an ointment for the spirit when there's so much that's seeking to bruise you. Pedro's story can offer a portal for folks to find respite somewhere in the world, even for these ninety minutes of the film. The study was made for undocumented and disabled audiences, but when you look at it, even if someone doesn't relate with Pedro's experience, they also still experience these feelings of wanting to make change in the world.

When we actually get to the core of the story, which is about self-worth, about community, about love, about understanding your authentic self — all of us experience that. And regardless of the lens through which we experience that, the more that we just hone into these topics through the lens of our own lived experience, the more true and authentic the story also becomes. 

Kate: In your artist statement, you wrote, "My work understands cinema as a canvas where the poetic and the political intertwine," which I think is really fascinating. What does that mean to you?

Set: Since I started off as a community organizer, for most of my life, the way that undocumentedness has been shoved down my existence and into the world is through the lens of the law. Let's pass immigration reform bill legislation, right? Let's make this policy a reality. No one thinks about undocumented people through the lens of not-the-law, everything-but-the-law, anything-but-the-law.

One of my friends and just a brilliant scholar, Erika Hirugami, talks about the aesthetics of undocumentedness. I am not the first undocumented filmmaker to share work with the world. My work builds upon the powerful work of Tam Tran, Nancy Meza, Jesus Íñiguez, Julio Salgado, Dreamers Adrift, Undeportable Productions, Marcos Nieves, Armando Ibañez. For so long, the experience of being undocumented has also been shaped by the narratives that are told about us. Often, these narratives are used for political ends. What I am trying to claim, not just in my work, but in my way of being with my life, is that undocumentedness is indeed political, but it is not a political experience that is deprived of humanity, that is deprived of poetics.

If the law is indeed written text, and if we can see the law as literature on paper, what I mean by the poetic and the political is reading in between the lines of legislation, where we can derive the lived experience and humanity of people that are just perceived as pawns in a political game, when in reality we have our own aspirations, ambitions, hopes, heartaches, and desires. 

How can the work of cinema be a way to reflect the truths that are experienced by people like myself, by people like my family? How can I claim that through this work that is both political, poetic, and human, that you matter, you are not disposable? You belong in the larger whole that is a family of life, whether you're undocumented or you're disabled, whether you're trans, whether you're queer, whoever you may be. “The world offers itself to your imagination,” to quote Mary Oliver.

Kate: Do you have anything in the works now that you're excited about?

Set: Yes. I feel like I'm both excited and nervous about all the things that are in the works. But I should also say, in this moment of rupture in the fields that we exist in, especially because I feel it more directly in film, things are crumbling, things that used to work are no longer working. I feel excited in spite of the uncertainty around it. Grace Lee Boggs says we do not get to choose the times that we live in, but we get to choose who we are and what we do.

I didn't get to choose to live under fascism, under corporate conglomeration, but this is where I am. I'm taking it as an opportunity to be part of making something that's different ancestrally, hearkening the energy of my ancestors who probably were living through similar times and yet they didn't give up. They did their best so that someone like me can have life in this world.

I am working on four films, but the one that I'm most excited about is a scripted project. It's a feature-length, coming-of-age story called Dream Boy that uses unrequited love as an allegory to illustrate what it feels like to grow up undocumented in the United States, unwanted by the only country that you have called home. Similar to Unseen, I want to use this film as a portal to remind undocumented people that they do not need the validation of this country that has trampled on our sense of self. Rather, how can we find that love, that dignity in each other.

One last thing that I will share is that I write poetry voraciously. I'm excited about the poetry that I write, even if it never gets published because it is a portal to me. Everything is a portal, but for me, writing these poems is an opportunity for me to just hold myself tenderly, for lack of better words. 

Kate: To close, I wanted to leave space in case there's anything you wanted to say that we didn't get to.

Set: I feel so grateful to USA for selecting me to be part of this year's cohort, and I think sometimes it's easy for me to feel a sense of survivor's guilt. As an undocumented person, it's not lost on me how privileged I am to have access to spaces like these, and it is a privilege that I hope to steward for as long as I can. Even though I'm so upfront about being undocumented, considering the political moment that we're in, it's almost like you all are embracing that aspect of me wholeheartedly and not asking me to censor who I am, because it is my truth, and there's no other way.

At a time when support for undocumented people and Palestinian artists is  used as an excuse to pull away resources from institutions, we need solidarity from every level possible, not just mutual aid, but from places with money, like foundations. As much as there's this opportunity for me to share my experience, I hope I'm not the first. I especially hope I'm not the last undocumented person to have access to these kinds of resources.

My prayer, for lack of a better word, ancestrally, cosmically, is that this becomes a gesture of solidarity and an invitation for your colleagues in other spaces, for other foundations to look to places like USA, knowing that, “Hey, they're doing it. How can we do what USA is doing so that we can support artists, especially during this moment in time?”