New Documentary Follows Women Who Found Sanctuary at Two UU Churches

A new documentary film about two immigrant mothers who found sanctuary at a pair of Colorado Unitarian Universalist churches will have a special online screening at the 2026 General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association.

The screening of If I Could Stay/Si Pudiera Quedarme will take place at 7 p.m. ET/6 p.m. CT/5 p.m. MT/4 p.m. PT on Wednesday, June 17, and will be accessible through the UUA’s GA app.

Filmed over the course of eight years, If I Could Stay/Si Pudiera Quedarme follows Jeanette Vizguerra, a mother of four from Mexico, and Ingrid Encalada Latorre, a mother of three from Peru, as they enter sanctuary at two UU congregations—First Unitarian Society of Denver and UU Church of Boulder, respectively—to avoid deportation and separation from their children.

Following the screening, a live Zoom conversation will explore how faith communities and immigrant organizers across the country are reimagining the meaning of sanctuary today. The panel discussion begins at 8:30 p.m. ET/7:30 p.m. CT/6:30 p.m. MT/5:30 p.m. PT.

Panelists will include Vizguerra, an immigrant rights organizer and one of the women featured in the film; the film’s co-director, Theo Rigby, who for over a decade has created stories focusing on the immigrant experience in the United States; Rev. Deborah Lee, co-executive director of the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity; and Rev. John Fife, a retired minister of Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson, Arizona, and a leader in the sanctuary movement.

“The idea of the film is just to really show this experience that they go through and to try to show many different layers of them as human beings, as mothers and friends and part of a community, [and] as obviously very brave and courageous people that have stepped into this role of advocates, activists, and organizers,” Rigby, who co-directed the documentary with Florencia Krochik, told UU World.

‘This Is About Justice, Not Charity’

Encalada Latorre came to the United States in 2002 as a teenager hoping for a better life. Faced with deportation, she was in sanctuary for four years at the UU Church of Boulder, Colorado, starting in late 2018. After she campaigned for a path for citizenship for herself and her children with the support of congregants and others, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis granted her clemency. She is now seeking for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to reopen her case so that she may stay in the United States and continues to advocate for her family and the rights of all immigrants.

Addressing the Boulder congregation in the film, she says that “we are all siblings and here we are in the fight.”

Vizguerra, who came to the United States in 1997 fleeing violence in Mexico, found sanctuary at the First Unitarian Society of Denver on two separate occasions, in 2017 and again in 2019. In 2025, after leaving sanctuary, she was arrested by ICE and sent to the GEO Group’s ICE detention facility in Aurora, Colorado. There, she continued organizing and speaking with the press, and she was awarded the 42nd annual Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award while still in custody. Released in December 2025, she continues to advocate for immigrant rights.

Named as one of 100 most influential people in the world in 2017 by Time magazine, in the film Vizguerra says that as an activist, she is “not just fighting for my case, not just fighting for my family, but fighting for my whole community.”

“Jeanette and Ingrid are the real stars of all this,” Arnie Carter, a twenty-year member of the Denver congregation, told UU World. “The documentary is both heartwarming and heartbreaking. I hope it educates people. It’s a very emotional documentary.”

Sanctuary “is about mutual aid. This is about justice, not charity,” added Carter, who is interviewed in the film.

Mary Dineen, a thirty-year member of the Boulder congregation, was co-chair of its Sanctuary Ministry during the four years that Encalada Latorre resided at the church.

“I think it was living out our values of compassion, of helping our neighbor, of being a community partner, of standing on the side of love with immigrants,” Dineen told UU World.

The congregation was assisted by about ten faith communities in the area that provided volunteers and more to sustain Encalada Latorre and her children. “I don’t think we could have done it without our community partners,” she added.

And while Dineen said it was a “fabulous experience” that she would “do again,” nonetheless, “it is hard to do.”

The documentary doesn’t shy away from addressing some of the challenges, including friction that arose between some members of the Boulder congregation, which is almost exclusively white, and the family living in their church, who is not. Dineen and others on the sanctuary team insisted that they be led by Encalada Latorre on decisions affecting her, but “that was hard for a lot of people,” Dineen said.

In the film, Rev. Kelly Dignan, who was lead minister at Boulder while Encalada Latorre was in sanctuary, tells the congregation that it is not their place to tell Encalada Latorre what to do, and adds that sanctuary work “is not work that can be done from the mind, from the intellect. It has to be done from the heart.”

“One of the goals of the film from the get-go is to really be used as this tool for faith communities to look at what happened in the film, look at what happened in these congregations through this longitudinal journey that’s very, very difficult,” Rigby said.

While there were significant challenges for the congregations, Rigby emphasized that the experience “was also incredibly rewarding and really life-changing for some of the congregants to go through this years-long process of being a host community, a host congregation, and just being connected with these amazingly beautiful people and families of Jeanette and Ingrid’s families.”

Rigby, who was familiar with Unitarian Universalism through past film and photography projects, said it was a coincidence that the film ended up focusing on two UU congregations, yet he wasn’t surprised.

“I was aware of the UU community and always felt drawn to it and really just loved the diversity,” he said. “That diversity of experience and just wisdom and knowledge with so many different theological and spiritual perspectives coming into one room under one roof was always really powerful to me.”

Additional Ways to Experience the Documentary

The film was supported by Latino Public Broadcasting, which has for over twenty-eight years developed award-winning film and digital media that explores the history, arts, and culture of Latino Americans. Rigby said he feels “very, very lucky” to have the film be shown on PBS supported by Latino Public Broadcasting, which he noted “continues to take risks” at a time when the First Amendment is under attack and different voices are being shut down.

The documentary premiered on June 1 on PBS stations, PBS.org, and the PBS App (check local listings).

Rigby and his team want to offer the film as a tool for UU congregations to watch and discuss. They have a study guide with discussion questions and other resources to help congregations get conversations started.

“I hope that the film is viewed as a tool for UU congregations to move not just their immigration work but [all] their social justice work forward in whatever direction they think it needs to go,” he said.

Interested congregations may email him at theo@inationmedia.com. More information is available on the iNation Media website.

“I hope that folks come away with this idea that you just don’t know what people are going through, those little interactions of at the restaurant or buying food, or maybe with the person who cleans your house, or the mother of your son’s friend, or whatever it is, you just don’t know what people have gone through, and you don’t know what emotionally they’re going through,” he said. “And hopefully, as you see in the film in a lot of different ways, hopefully you can just try to inspire a little bit more kindness on a human level.”