🎥 Project Vision
- The Cognitive Institute of Dallas aims to produce an independent film that centers the lived experiences of Black and Brown families whose separation story might include CPS involvement, immigration/ICE situations, incarceration, blind removal, or dissolution through divorce/disagreement.
- Parents’ casting call: The project invites parents who have undergone said separation and recovery journeys to share their story, participate in the film, and reclaim narrative control.
- The aim: systemic injustice meets personal voice. The film will expose how layered systems — child welfare, immigration enforcement, criminal justice, family law — converge disproportionately on Black and Brown families, and how recovery and reunification are possible despite those odds.
đź“‹ Key Themes to Explore
- Separation & Surveillance: What it felt like to have children removed, whether by CPS, immigration, or other system intervention.
- Journey to Recovery: The uphill climb of fulfilling service plans, accessing supports, navigating court or immigration channels.
- Reunion & Reconciliation: What it means to be reunited — physically, emotionally, and socially — with children; rebuilding trust, reshaping relationships.
- Voice & Agency: Giving parents and families the chance to tell their own story — on their terms, in their language, with their truths.
- Systemic Lens: Highlighting how race, class, immigration status, neighborhood, and community resources (or lack thereof) shape each stage — separation, recovery, reunification.
- Restoration: The path forward — what “keeping families together” looks like, what supports are needed, how community and policy must shift.
🤝 Why This Matters
- When families of color are separated under multiple overlapping systems (CPS + immigration + poverty + policing), their stories are rarely prioritized or shaped by them. This film flips that dynamic.
- Storytelling is restorative: It gives parents a voice, a platform, and a chance to heal by being heard.
- It builds public empathy and awareness: Viewers will see the human face behind statistics and policy debates.
- The casting call signals a shift: Not just about parents, but by parents, as co-creators of the narrative.
🪞 CALL TO ACTION: Heal Through Voice
Subtitle: “Telling your truth is a form of recovery.”
- Trauma fragments people — storytelling can stitch them back together.
- Parents who share their stories often find that speaking truth out loud reclaims their agency and turns pain into purpose.
- The Cognitive Institute of Dallas believes that voice itself is a form of therapy — where parents move from what happened to me to what I’m creating from it.
- This is not just filmmaking — it’s community healing in motion.