The Legacy of the ‘Zero Tolerance’ Policy: Traumatized Children With No Access to Treatment was awarded World Press Photo Online Video of the Year in 2019. We catch up with Almudena Toral, the director, to talk about her experience covering the consequences of the policy, and how winning the digital storytelling contest has impacted the story. “The best part has been to be able to amplify the voice of a 6-year-old girl who very much became a symbol of the grueling consequences of the zero-tolerance policy.”
Adayanci Pérez was one of more than 2,500 children who were separated from their parents at the US-Mexico border as part of Donald Trump’s 'Zero Tolerance' policy. The six-year-old Guatemalan girl was away from her family for three-and-a-half months, and before being allowed to return to her family in Guatemala, she was diagnosed with acute trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
The Legacy of the ‘Zero Tolerance’ Policy: Traumatized Children With No Access to Treatment, by Univision News Digital, followed Adayanci as she integrates back into her community. The team first learned about her story through her aunt, who lives in a Guatemalan community in Florida.
“The family was desperate to find Adayanci after she had been separated from her father at the border. We decided to follow her story and share it because we thought it was an important voice left out in the political conversations about the zero-tolerance policy: that of children directly affected,” explains Toral.
The team attempted to visit Adayanci in Michigan first, while she was separated, but according to them, access was very difficult. They kept in touch with the family and decided to join them in Guatemala to wait for Adayanci to be reunited with them.
“We didn’t know what was going to happen, but we were interested in seeing the aftermath of a reunification up close. There were signs that indicated that Adayanci had been struggling with the separation.”
Shot in a ‘vérité’ style, the film gives a direct voice to Adayanci and shows how PTSD affected her integration back into her community.
“It was a really tough story to cover emotionally. Bearing witness to Adayanci disassociation (a clear symptom of PTSD) during her first day back in school in Guatemala was grueling and one of the saddest things I have ever seen. It was also heartbreaking to read the documents about the diagnosis she was deported with, which were in English, and thinking of all the other children and families who don’t even have anyone to help them understand what is going on with their kids.”
Still from The Legacy of the ‘Zero Tolerance’ Policy: Traumatized Children With No Access to Treatment.
The film was first released in 2018 and since then it has been recognized internationally. Besides winning the World Press Photo Online Video of the Year award in 2019, the production received a News & Documentary Emmy Award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism in Spanish among other prizes. Toral explains that the team decided to donate the World Press Photo Online Video of the Year €10,000 prize to help Adayanci to recover:
“It was our moral responsibility after seeing the terrible psychological damage she was left with after the family separation at the U.S. border. Through the channeling help of a Guatemalan-American foundation, Adayanci and her mother have been receiving therapy every week in Malacatán, about an hour away from where they live. Adayanci is also receiving extra-curricular education and her school is getting a new kitchen to help kids and families in their community.”
Toral continues working on different projects related to immigration issues in Latin America and the United States. One of them is focused on the so-called ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy, which according to Toral “has dramatically altered access to asylum in America.” She is also investigating labor trafficking abuses in Texas and researching the impact of the increase of enforcement operations and immigration raids in the United States.
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Entries for the 2020 Digital Storytelling Contest are now open. The contest rewards the best interactive and short documentary productions of 2019 and is open to all professional digital storytellers around the world. The Digital Storytelling Contest has two main headline awards: the World Press Photo Interactive of the Year and the World Press Photo Online Video of the Year.
Toral shared her experience as one of the 2019 Digital Storytelling Contest winners:
“The best part has been to be able to amplify the voice of a 6-year-old girl who very much became a symbol of the grueling consequences of the zero-tolerance policy.”
She encourages all journalists, filmmakers, photographers and digital storytellers from all backgrounds to enter the 2020 Digital Storytelling Contest:
“It is free and easy to enter, it is an incredible opportunity being selected and attending the awards show and festival in Amsterdam. Most importantly it can amplify the voices of the people and issues in your stories you so much care about. (...) I’d especially encourage storytellers with innovative approaches and storytellers from the Global South to apply.”
Enter now and find out more about contest categories, prizes, and dates
