A documentarian with a track record of sparking change is showing the award-winning film “Refuge(e)” on Thursday at 6:00pm in the University Center ballroom.

The film tells the story of two refugees who fled violent threats to their life in their home countries. After making the long and dangerous journey across most of the Western hemisphere, they asked for asylum at the US/Mexico border and were incarcerated in a for-profit prison in New Mexico for months on end.

Sylvia Johnson of Free Roaming Studios is the humanitarian and problem-solver behind the film.

The refugees featured in the film “represent thousands more like them who can’t tell their stories,” said Johnson on her website, “and their fight for freedom and the right to live calls into question the nature of our immigrant detention system.”

“Refuge(e)” was used to launch a successful campaign to get the New Mexico Educational Retirement Board, a panel that oversees the multibillion-dollar pension fund for New Mexico teachers, to divest from private prison corporations in 2020. It was the first educator pension fund in the Southwest to do so.

Following the screening, Johnson will be joined by three other panelists for a discussion on the film. The panelists include Ariel Brachfeld of the Colorado Film Commission, CMU Mass Communication instructor Greg Mikolai, and CMU-Tech Technical Instructor of Digital Filmmaking Josh Meuwly.

Johnson will also be discussing her current project, which focuses on animal rescue in Costa Rica.