Known as the “migrant’s Death Valley” for its desolate landscape and unforgiving heat, Brooks County, Texas is believed to have the highest death toll for migrants anywhere in America, although the vast majority of bodies are hidden in unmarked graves and never identified. The documentary follows a forensic anthropologist and a team of students as they seek to identify bodies and contact families.
Join us for a conversation with documentarian Lisa Molomot, Sara Abbas, and Asma Zalim to see clips from the film.
About the speakers:
Lisa Molomot, Producer/Co-Director/Cinematographer, has directed documentaries about the American Southwest including the Peabody Award-winning Missing in Brooks County, The Cleaners and Soledad. Her film School’s Out has helped the movement to provide outdoor education for young children, and her short film Teaching in Arizona is an inside look at the teaching crisis in that state. She was a recent Fulbright Scholar in Canada, a Yale Poynter Fellow in Journalism and currently teaches at the James E. Rogers School of Law and the UA Human Rights Practice Graduate Program at the University of Arizona.
Sara Abbas is Head of Paris Office of the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Born in 1975 in Sweden, Mrs. Abbas graduated from the University of Växjö in international administration in 2001. She started to work for IOM the same year and has held several positions within IOM before being appointed Head of Office in 2012.
Asma Zalim is a Senior Project Assistant born in 1994 in Morocco. She holds a master’s degree in Diplomacy and Strategic Negotiations from Paris Saclay University as well as a Korean Studies master’s degree from the University of Paris. She joined IOM in 2021 as a Project Assistant to work on the resettlement of refugees bound to France, USA, and Canada.
About the International Organization for Migration:
The UN Migration agency established in 1951, the IOM is the leading inter-governmental organization in the field of migration and works closely with governmental, intergovernmental and non-governmental partners.
