As a child, you usually don’t have the option to possess your own agency. However, in the case of a young Dominican American boy, he must choose between telling the truth or lying to protect the livelihood of those he loves. Gianfranco Fernández-Ruiz ’s When Big People Lie , co-written by Pablo Cervera and produced by the AFI Conservatory, follows an eight-year-old boy named Elvis (Kaden Quinn) whose mother, Lola (Sasha Merci), has arranged a lucrative for-profit marriage with a Palestinian immigrant (Faruk Amireh) in the hopes of fixing their money woes. When an immigration agent (Diane Sargent) comes to assess the legitimacy of the union, the future of Elvis and his mother’s life out of poverty hangs in the balance.

When Big People Lie has made the rounds at the Telluride Film F

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