Webinar On-Demand: 'After Landing' Film Screening Q&A

On March 11, 2024, the Pulitzer Center virtually screened the short documentary, After Landing. The film, directed by 2023 Columbia Journalism Reporting Fellows Beibei Liu and Mayara Teixeira, follows a young Venezuelan couple after they immigrated to the United States via the Darién Gap. After a bus takes them from Texas to New York City, Jeczebel Lopez and Jorge Ojeda must find work and housing to support their children back home.

"In the end, it is a love story," Teixeira said. “And this was a surprise for us.”

In 2022, over 10,000 migrants were bused to New York City by Texas and Arizona state authorities. The sudden influx of people created a humanitarian crisis throughout the city, which filmmakers Liu and Teixeira sought to capture by telling Jorge and Jeczebel’s stories in After Landing. 

“We both know that we want to tell a human story—a story that is not only about the facts, the numbers,” Liu said about creating the film. “We didn’t want to repeat the news coverage, so we told this story from a very personal perspective.”

Speaking about building trust with Jeczebel and Jorge, Teixeira said, "If something bad happened and they called me and I said I would be there I was there—always with a camera.... I kept my promises.”

After many months of filming, their documentary screened at Columbia Journalism School DocFest in December 2023 and at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Missoula, Montana, in February 2024.

Jorge and Jeczebel have since found jobs and started their applications for asylum in New York City.

The filmmakers have recently started new roles, Liu at CBS News and Teixeira at Brazil’s TV Globo. For more information on what it was like to report After Landing, you can check out the filmmakers’ field notes and project page. You can also access the trailer at this link.