HBO doc to explore US border separations

Premium US cablenet HBO has greenlit a documentary film from Oscar-winner Ellen Goosenberg Kent and producer Talos Films that follows families who were separated at the US border.

Ellen Goosenberg Kent

Torn Apart: Separated at the Border will explore the traumatic effect on children of being taken away from their parents without their consent, often for months at a time.

Director and producer Goosenberg Kent also directed and coproduced HBO’s Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1, which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject) in 2015.

“Torn Apart: Separated at the Border provides a deep dive into the human consequences of these policies, offering intimate access to the lives and experiences of the families involved, from the violence that forced them to flee their homes, through the heart-wrenching separation of children from their parents, and then the long, uncertain and agonising fight to be heard in a court of law,” said Goosenberg Kent.

The producer is Xochiti Dorsey and the editor is Luis Alvarez y Alvarez. The executive producers for Talos Films are Elli Hakami and Julian P Hobbs.

In other news, HBO has commissioned a documentary portrait of fashion icon Ralph Lauren which will debut on the channel on November 12.

Very Ralph is a feature-length doc directed and produced by Susan Lacy and executive produced by Graydon Carter

HBO Documentary Films is also in production on a true crime series that takes an in-depth look at the case of chiildren who went missing and were murdered in Atlanta between 1979 and 1981.

HBO Documentary Films, Show of Force, Roc Nation and Get Lifted Film Co are re-examining the case and bringing new evidence to light. The issue was brought back into the national conscious recently by the Atlanta Monster podcast, hosted by Payne Lindsay.