Digital Detention + Director Q&A + BORDR

Digital Detention is showing at The Ultimate Picture Palace on Wednesday 21 October, as part of a double bill that brings together two films on the surveillance of migrants. The main feature is Carolina Sánchez Boe's documentary, which looks at the for-profit surveillance industry built around migrants in the USA. It follows how GPS monitors and facial recognition apps turn asylum-seekers into data for profit, told through the stories of people living under constant watch in Austin, Texas — a city transformed by the tech boom. It's a 53-minute film, so it doesn't overstay its welcome.

It's paired with BORDR, a six-minute animation made in collaboration with Gabriel Harrell, Felipe Bustos Sierra, Robyn Dawson, Jayson Turner and Mary Bosworth. That one draws on publicly accessible material from private companies contracted by the UK Home Office to provide border control services, so it brings the subject closer to home. The night closes with a half-hour Q&A with Sánchez Boe, which gives you a chance to ask her about the film and the industry she's documenting.

The screening is presented as part of Global ARTiculations, a series run by the Centre for Criminology's Global Crime and Justice Hub and Border Criminologies. They describe it as a way of opening up criminological debates on power, violence, borders and control to art and alternative forms of expression, so this fits right into that — two films on the same theme, one from the US and one from the UK, followed by a conversation with the filmmaker.

It starts at 5:45pm at The Ultimate Picture Palace on Jeune Street, just off Cowley Road in East Oxford, and tickets are £8. Between the two films and the Q&A, you're looking at about an hour and a half of screening followed by the discussion.