This film looks to shed light on the rigor behind journalism and why it's all worth it. It’s a piece of work about pursuing the truth wherever it may lead and bringing that truth back in word form for the world to read. In this film, we show the perseverance of immigration reporter Caitlin Dickerson as she exposes a policy of family separation at the Mexico-US border, which was vehemently denied by the government. The spot was released at a time of polarizing discussions about immigration, making it even more critical to reiterate the importance of the truth and the value of NYT journalism.

This was a story that launched at a time the issue of immigration and family separation were hotly debated. The script had to bring the emotion of this heavy story while balancing the journalistic integrity of The New York Times. The script puts us in the reporter's stream of consciousness, adopting her tone of voice while also maintaining The Times’s inimitable house style. The script, a connected thread of words that appears on screen, creating the effect of a continuously rewriting headline, was central to putting the viewer in the psyche of the journalist as she ventured into the complex world of government sources and immigrant shelters.

The film’s art direction is centered around a unique typographic treatment of continuously rewriting headlines paired with emotive mixed media and found footage. By using this headline construct and supporting it with this real footage from the reporting, we were able to put viewers in the shoes of the journalist as she worked, making them experience all the fears, doubts and triumphs that go into reporting a Times story. In this way, the art direction sharply brought to life the world of family separation with the resulting film feeling needed given the current conversations around immigration and immigration policy.