UConn filmmaker’s documentary telling story of Connecticut immigrant family stricken with COVID at baby’s birth earns Emmy nominations

Oscar Guerra, a human rights activist and documentary filmmaker who teaches at the University of Connecticut at Stamford, is nominated for two national Emmy Awards this week.

Guerra’s film “Love, Life and the Virus,” which tells the story of a Guatemalan woman hospitalized with COVID-19 while she is pregnant with her second child and her family. With her husband and son also ill with COVID, the local community comes to the family’s aid, including the son’s teacher who takes on the responsibility of caring for the newborn baby until the family is able to.

“Love, Life and the Virus,” which aired on PBS as an episode of Frontline, is nominated in two categories: Outstanding Feature Story in a Newsmagazine and Best Story in a Newsmagazine.

The winners of the 42nd annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards will be announced Sept. 28 and 29.

Guerra specializes in documentaries that advocate social change, with an emphasis on Latino and immigration themes.

Guerra is an assistant professor of film and video in the Digital Media and Design Department at UConn Stamford, where he’s also involved with UConn’s Human Rights Institute and its Dodd Human Rights Impact campaign. He joined the faculty there in 2019.

Guerra was born in Mexico and has worked in the U.S. for the past decade. In a statement released by UConn Monday morning, Guerra notes that his own child was born during the Trump Administration’s Zero Tolerance immigration policy.

“Can you imagine being separated from your kids, just like that, because you’re seeking asylum?” he says. “Maybe you’re fortunate enough that it has never happened and is never going to happen to you, but what if? What would you do for your kids? I’m not trying to put any judgment or anything here, it’s just shedding light on something, it’s just starting that conversation, but this is going to be a very powerful film.”

In a future collaboration with Frontline, Guerra plans a multimedia project about the reunification of families separated at the U.S. border. Guerra has described the project as “a comprehensive examination of the Zero Tolerance policy and its aftermath. What is the Biden Administration doing about it now? Are we going to forget about it? Are we going to learn from the past?”

“I realized that it was almost my moral responsibility to use my talents and my field to give back to my community,” he says. “You can start reframing the Latino immigrant experience. What we see in mainstream media, it’s not an accurate reality of who we are. Our reality is very complex and rich. Media has a lot of power, and when we document, we empower. And that’s what we need.”

Christopher Arnott can be reached at carnott@courant.com.