Sanctuary Cinema + Civic Plaza + NMPBS
Where and when
Location
Join Sanctuary Cinema in the Civic Plaza for an outdoor screening in partnership with NMPBS + Albuquerque Convention Center.
Águilas 14 minutes Discussion Guide
by Kristy Guevara-Flanagan and Maite Zubiaurre
Along the scorching southern border in Arizona, only an estimated one out of every five missing migrants is ever found. Águilas is the story of one group of searchers--the Águilas del Desierto--who volunteer monthly to recover the missing.
Driver 82 minutes Discussion Guide show an excerpt of 40 min.
by Nesa Azimi and Nicolas Borel and Ines Hofmann Kanna
After losing everything, Desiree Wood takes a second lease on life as a long-haul trucker. While she struggles to balance life on the road with her ambitions as the head of a driver-led movement run from the cab of her truck, Desiree and her sisterhood of truckers rally against the crushing forces of an industry that is indifferent to their survival.
Agenda
- 6:00PM: Doors
- 6:30PM: Film Screening
- 7:70PM: Panel + Discussion
Panelists TBD
About Sanctuary Cinema
Founded in 2025 by shiloh burton and Luis Peña-Alvarez, Sanctuary Cinema (SC) is a New Mexico–based nonfiction film and community dialogue project dedicated to creating brave spaces for belonging, reflection, and transformative justice through documentary film. Anchored in narrative sovereignty, SC screens stories told by those most impacted, honoring lived experience as essential knowledge and rejecting passive spectatorship by fostering audience engagement, collective storytelling, and civic action.
The free, monthly series activates accessible public venues across Albuquerque, pairing POV/PBS films with facilitated panels, local filmmakers, cultural workers, nonprofit partners, and audience participation. By bridging artistic, civic, and community worlds, Sanctuary Cinema builds trust, strengthens relationships, and provides pathways for meaningful local engagement. Sanctuary Cinema uses documentary film as a catalyst for collective care, collaboration, and community-led change.
About POV PBS (co-collaborator)
POV (a cinema term for “point of view”) is television's longest-running showcase for independent nonfiction films. POV premieres 14-16 of the best, boldest and most innovative programs every year on PBS. Since 1988, POV has presented over 500 films to public television audiences across the country.
About PBS (sponsor)
PBS offers programming that expands the minds of children, documentaries that open up new worlds, non-commercialized news programs that keep citizens informed on world events and cultures and programs that expose America to the worlds of music, theater, dance and art. It is a multi-platform media organization that serves Americans through television, mobile and connected devices, the web, in the classroom, and more.
About Albuquerque Civic Plaza (location)
Civic Plaza was created in 1974 to host outdoor events in the heart of Albuquerque. Civic Plaza is the largest public space in the center of downtown, with a capacity of 20,000 people and a sizable performance stage. In late 2014, management of Civic Plaza was turned over to the Albuquerque Convention Center (managed by Legends Global). Around this time, Downtown Albuquerque Main Street obtained a Heart of the Community grant for placemaking on Civic Plaza from Southwest Airlines. The convergence of these two events lead to the creation of Civic Plaza Presents, an initiative to bring more events to Civic Plaza and to make it a friendlier and more welcoming public space for downtown and all of Albuquerque.
The focus of Civic Plaza Presents has been to make the underutilized public square at 3rd Street and Tijeras a more viable place for the community to enjoy. The intent is to, not only be a part of the moment to revitalize Downtown’s social and business scenes, but also to enhance the city’s sense of community.