URANIA LEILUS is a short (21 min.) film that tells the Trump-era story of a young female journalist who is subjected to death threats and intimidation after witnessing human rights abuses at an ICE detention center for undocumented immigrant children. The film, whose script was a semifinalist in the 2020 BlueCat Screenwriting Competition, premiered at the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival and recently screened at the 28th Annual Sedona International Film Festival in Sedona, AZ as well as the FirstGlance Los Angeles Film Festival, at which lead actress Kate Garfield was nominated for Best Breakout Performance. Kate also won the Best Actress Award for URANIA LEILUS at the Film in Focus Film Festival in Bucharest, Romania. URANIA LEILUS is one of six finalists to be nominated for the Free Speech Award at the Free Speech Film Festival in Philadelphia, PA. The next screening will take place at the Festival Internazionale Segni della Notte in Urbino, Italy on Wednesday, November 30, 2022.

The film is intended to be a warning about what might happen when a seemingly stable democracy succumbs to far-right extremists and descends into fascism and barbarism — when immigrant children are ripped from their parents and locked up in cages without adequate food or medical care; when journalists and dissidents are regarded as “enemies of the people”, to be harassed, intimidated or "disappeared" by unidentified agents in unmarked vehicles — all of which have occurred (and continue to occur) under authoritarian regimes and have recently occurred in the United States. The film tells the story of a courageous young journalist who — in spite of being pushed to the brink by the atrocities she has witnessed and the death threats that follow — somehow finds the courage to stand tall in the face of radical evil.

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