Annie Kaempfer

Three undocumented teenagers, a Dominican girl, an African boy and a Peruvian girl, are about to graduate high school in the Bronx, while working with a teacher and a lawyer to try to get their papers to stay in the USA. Forced to grow up prematurely and navigate problems most adults don't even have to face, they're really just American teenagers who want to be with their friends, fall in love, and push back against authority.

This intimate portrait film follows master falconer Rodney Stotts on his mission to build a bird sanctuary and to provide access to nature for his stressed community. The Falconer weaves his present-day mission with the story of his past, both of which are deeply rooted in issues of social and environmental injustice. Stotts’s worldview in a nutshell: nature heals. In a forgotten corner of our nation’s capital, he takes the time to break through to those too often dismissed as “hard to reach.” This is a story of second chances: for injured birds of prey, for an abandoned plot of land, for a group of teenagers who have dropped out of high school, and for the falconer himself.