A Lien
2023 · 15m · USA
Directed by Sam Cutler-Kreutz, David Cutler-Kreutz
Genres: drama
Tones: melancholic, tense
On the day of their green card interview, a young couple and their daughter arrive at the USCIS office only to be ensnared in a nightmare when ICE agents use the routine appointment as an opportunity to arrest the husband for being undocumented.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Oscar-nominated immigration anxiety in 14 minutes — and the page proof reads like a Sundance prestige conveyor belt. Important. Boring.
Oscar nomination earned through a Kafkaesque chamber piece that uses bureaucratic claustrophobia the way the Dardennes use proximity. Festival pedigree is real but the form, not the issue, is what holds the gaze.
Oscar nomination plus the festival slate and Vimeo's 70K views confirm this isn't undercooked — a 14:36 contained drama set in a USCIS waiting room that builds dread out of paperwork. The Cutler-Kreutz brothers turning bureaucratic stillness into a thriller engine is craft of the most disciplined kind.
Reviews
A film which speaks to modern America.
A Lien escalates its tension to breaking point and does so with skill, summing up in fifteen minutes the exhaustion of living under the constant existential threat that is at the core of immigrant life in America.
Festivals
- Flickerfest 2023
- SXSW Film Festival 2023
- Palm Springs International ShortFest 2023
- Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival 2024
- Seattle International Film Festival 2023
- Brooklyn Film Festival 2023
- Washington Film Festival 2024, Grand Prize Narrative Award
- Academy Awards 2025, Nominee