Icebox

A timely, highly emotional contemporary drama sure to strike a nerve with viewers, Icebox explores the grim realities of the current U.S. immigration system through eyes of Oscar, a 12-year-old schoolboy from Honduras, whose unsolicited connection with a violent local gang has led his parents to smuggle him out of the country in hopes of escaping to America, and a better life under the care of his uncle Manuel, a recent immigrant. Caught by border agents in the Arizona desert and sent to an immigrant processing center for minors, Oscar struggles to gain control of his fate inside the "Icebox," befriending a young Colombian boy named Rafael and, later, an American journalist who agrees to track down Manuel in exchange for intel about life inside the center. Eventually Oscar is remanded to Manuel's care, but further perils await in the form of an asylum hearing without representation and, later, a solo bus journey to a sanctuary city to begin a new life, albeit not one he envisioned when he entered the United States.