Behind the doors of the asylum office lies a dramatic real-life stage where American ideals about human rights collide with the nearly impossible task of trying to know the truth.

It is an intimate world never before seen on screen—asylum officers, lawyers, translators, economic migrants, legitimate refugees looking for protection, all focused on the confidential interviews that are the heart of the asylum process.

Cases examined within the film involve individuals originating from China, El Salvador, Albania, Nigeria, Romania, Algeria, France and Russia.

The New York Times review wrote “the two-hour documentary by Shari Robertson and Michael Camerini takes an amazingly unflinching look at the process for seeking political asylum in the United States.

broadcast called the film “a very strong show,” highlighting that “the close-ups, when people learn of their fates, are unforgettable, as are some of the very candid admissions by the INS interviewers.

And by all means, stay tuned until the very end, because the updates at the end will both amaze and amuse you.”[8] Esquire cited the film as “a reason to (still) watch PBS... [and] a reminder of the power public television can still generate when it’s firing on all of its high-minded cylinders.”[9] At the 2000 Independent Spirit Awards, the film was nominated the Truer than Fiction award.