Jeremy Markovich NewsChannel 36 Producer

You're not white. Or, you have a bit of an accent. Maybe, there's something about you that looks out of place.

Now, say you get pulled over. Can police tag you as a suspected illegal immigrant?

That's the crux of "9500 Liberty," a documentary from Eric Byler and Annabel Park. It's the result of more than a thousand hours of footage of people dealing with fear, hatred, misinformation and political string-pulling in Prince William County, Va., near suburban D.C. It came after county leaders passed a resolution requiring police to question anyone who they have probable cause to think is an undocumented immigrant.

It starts, simply enough, with one man, his blog, and what appears to be a grassroots movement to rid Prince William County of illegal immigrants. Immigrants push back, calling it racial profiling. The resolution passes, despite nearly a dozen hours of passionate pleas against it.

Then, you find out that this grassroots movement isn't so grassroots after all.

The movie won the Charlotte Film Festival's award for Best Documentary on Thursday night and made its world premiere right afterward. I found it to be one of the rare movies that sucks you in right from the first scene. It's one you can't miss when it shows again on Sunday afternoon at 3:30 at Queens University of Charlotte. "9500 Liberty" is thought provoking, raw, and a scathing indictment of how issues come to a head in modern politics.

What it's NOT is glitzy and glamorous. The movie has a very YouTube feel to it, which is partly because you can find it in a disassembled form on YouTube. Eric and Annabel initially set out to make a traditional documentary, but found the need to get information out immediately and in real-time as the debate was happening. Annabel told me afterward that they thought about several different ways to present it, even as a sort of online Choose-Your-Own-Adventure. You can watch more than 100 clips at http://youtube.com/9500liberty.

In the end, the filmmakers chose film function over film fashion. It's not overly stylish, and it doesn't need to be.

Eric and Annabel both say they're taking this movie on the road because what happened in their county is something that could happen anywhere. If it does, here's to hoping that people use their cameras like this.

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Call it the Meck Connection: On Thursday, our local film commission announced a partnership with German filmmakers in Mecklenburg. The German Mecklenburg. It's the same one that gave us Queen Charlotte, which gave us our city's name. NewsChannel 36's Michelle Boudin touched on this in her story on Thursday.

Anyway, several of those German representatives (and even a German radio reporter) were there Thursday night at the EpiCentre Theatres for "Jerichow," a subtitled German story about a man who falls in love with his boss' wife. It was shot in the fields, forests and even the Baltic Sea beaches of German Mecklenburg. I know -- a lot of you don't like subtitles, but it's still easy to follow the action.

But clearly, the best line of the night came from the guy sitting in front of me. "You think they've ever seen 'The Mecklenburgers?'" he asked.

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For a complete listing of films and times, check out charlottefilmfestival.org.

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