Hybrid filmmaking is an approach to filmmaking that weaves traditional documentary-style techniques with scripted sequences to tell a cinematic story. Filmmakers Alex Rivera and Cristina Ibarra premiered their hybrid activist film, The Infiltrators, at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival where it won the NEXT Audience Award, NEXT Innovator Prize and critical acclaim for taking audiences inside the world of the U.S. immigration detention system. In this intimate conversation, Rivera and Ibarra reveal the two-year journey of making The Infiltrators. We discuss how they successfully executed their hybrid approach and get their advice on lessons learned to pull off the cinematic experiment that the L.A.Times called, “the energy of a crime thriller crossed with the urgency of a social-issue documentary.”

You can learn more about The Infiltrators and watch the film here.