“And I refuse to feel like A foreigner in my own country.” Juan Teofilo Murat

How would you feel if the nation where you were born and raised stripped you of your citizenship? Stripped you of the political identity you had known since your birth? What would you do? That is the premise of the moving observational documentary Stateless by the renown filmmaker Michèle Stephenson that follows Rosa Iris and Juan Teofilo, two black Dominicans of Haitian descent who struggle to reclaim Dominican citizenship, and a non-Haitian light-skinned Dominican xenophobic nationalist female who protests Haitian immigration to her country. This lesson provides a humanistic framework in understanding the role and impact of the 168-13 Constitutional Tribunal ruling/policy in the Dominican Republic which deprived thousands of Dominicans of Haitian descent of their nationality essentially rendering them stateless.

KEYWORDS: humanization, bureaucracy, borders, foreigners, walls, racism