Brian Lucas says the real story of Operation Metro Surge was not the chaos on the streets. It was how neighbors responded.
“The real story and the one that was inspiring the entire country was this idea of neighboring as a verb,” he said, “and how this community came together to resist a federal occupation and stand up for our neighbors.”
That idea drives “A Month in Minnesota,” the documentary Lucas made with filmmaker Annie Sundberg and executive producer Laura Gabbert. After the Twin Cities Film Festival, it heads to festivals in Woodstock, N.Y., Chicago and Washington, D.C.
It started with a phone call. As federal agents arrived in January, Lucas, who began his career in radio news at Minnesota Public Radio, called Sundberg, a friend since high school who had become a documentary filmmaker in New York. “I said, ‘Hey, I think that you need to be here because this is a story that needs to be told,’” Lucas said. She wrote back that she had been thinking the same thing and asked him to make the film with her. The focus on neighbors came later, the deeper they got into the work.
Lucas, Sundberg and Gabbert formed Resistance Productions.
Lucas was the boots on the ground, working with local photographers and sound crews and meeting people for coffee to earn their trust. Many were scared for their safety.
“We have a long history of being able to take something that can be thought of as harsh, like our winters, and turning it into something beautiful.”
Rather than chase the confrontations, the team relied on crowdsourced footage for those, and went looking for quieter moments. “You can find the chaos anywhere,” he said. “For us, it’s the smaller stories.”
Among them are a singing resistance group and the Bird Dogs, community activists who traded door knocking for ICE watch patrols, with music, dancing and potlucks along the way. “It was such a Minnesota way to go about it,” Lucas said.
That Minnesota streak runs through the film. “We have a long history of being able to take something that can be thought of as harsh, like our winters, and turning it into something beautiful,” he said.
One example is the gathering where neighbors met on the lake and spelled out SOS with their bodies, holding candles. A drone photo of it, with the skyline in the background, became an iconic image. It is also the film’s poster.
Lucas hopes the film reaches across the aisle. The people in it, he said, “are not of one political stripe. This is not about immigration policy, this is about cruelty and human decency.”
Some early viewers have told him it was hard to dive back in, and he understands why.
There is no streaming date yet. In the meantime, Lucas wants neighborhood groups to request screenings at amonthinminnesotafilm.com.
“We don’t have an immense budget to publicize this,” he said. “We need to rely on the community.”
Craig Wilson is the editor of Hill & Lake Press. He lives in Lowry Hill. Brian Lucas serves on the Hill & Lake Press board and occasionally writes for the paper.
