ABOUT THE FILM

No Jacket Required is currently filming a new documentary on child trafficking and human smuggling by illicit, transnational networks known as snakeheads.

To find out how to support the film, please visit our Contact page.


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ABOUT

Every year, Chinese human smugglers, known as 'snakeheads', use transnational, illicit networks to transport persons from China into the United States. Migrants pay fees as high as $80,000, and are subject to exploitation and brutality in the course of their journeys, as well as  retribution upon themselves and their families should they be unable to pay.

While the United States is already grappling with broad scale immigration problems, this particular topic brings the issue to deeper levels of legal and moral ambiguity, as Chinese children are sent to the United States by their own families, accompanied only by international smuggling criminals.

This documentary project will present this issue through discussions with both leading experts in the field, as well as with Chinese children who have been smuggled into the United States and currently seek legal immigrant status.

Our hope is that through examining the dynamics of this system, and presenting this information to as large an audience as possible, we may foster a greater awareness of the subject among policy makers and the population at large.


FUNDING

Would you like to become involved or donate to help underwrite production and post production costs? Please contact Lauren Gray at contactnjr@gmail.com.

WHO'S INVOLVED

Following the Snakehead is a documentary film project directed by Ethan Downing, an M.S. candidate in the Negotiation and Conflict Resolution Program at Columbia University. It is funded in part by Columbia's Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict, and Complexity, and produced by No Jacket Required.

The Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict, and Complexity (AC4)
AC4 is a new consortium for research, practice, and scholarship at Columbia University.  Part of the Earth Institute, AC4 is committed to advancing knowledge and best practices in the areas of conflict, violence, peace-building, and sustainable development from an interdisciplinary perspective.  The primary objective of AC4 is to bring people and institutions from a variety of disciplines together to tackle complex problems with increasingly integrated (and interdisciplinary) understandings, methodologies, and solutions.

AC4 was created in collaboration with several conflict resolution entities at Columbia University, including: the International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution (ICCCR), the Center for International Conflict Resolution (CICR), the United Nations Studies Program at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), the Mediation Clinic at Columbia Law School, and the M.S. Program on Negotiation and Conflict Resolution.

No Jacket Required (NJR)
NJR is an NYC based theater and production company, specializing in social media and video integration.  NJR has performed both domestically and internationally, most recently co-producing the award winning show, "Confirmation," for the New York International Fringe