Multi Emmy® Award-winning series, POV, reimagines a cinema more accessible for audiences with vision loss in unseen, the debut film by Filipino-American director Set Hernandez, recent winner of the Truer than Fiction Award—presented to an emerging director of non-fiction features—at the Independent Spirit Awards.

Through experimental cinematography and sound, the documentary’s person-first approach centers the lived experiences of a queer filmmaker and blind protagonist whose undocumented status has impacted their choices. This powerful work explores the intersections of immigration, disability, mental health and belonging. unseen is produced by Hernandez, Day Al-Mohamed, and Félix Endara; co-produced by Dorian Gomez Pestaña; and POV alum and Academy Award® nominee Diane Quon (Minding the Gap, Wuhan, Wuhan) is the executive producer.

Made over the course of seven years of friendship, unseen begins as an observational journey of Pedro, an aspiring social worker who happens to be a blind undocumented immigrant, confronting political restrictions in order to get his college degree. Guided by a conversation between him and director Hernandez, unseen explores Pedro’s relationships to everyone around him: his family who supports him while he studies to become a mental health professional, and his triathlon coach who encourages him on long distance bike rides. The film is a jagged quest towards healing in a society that struggles to see those with these challenges as multi-dimensional.

To personalize this story, Hernandez chose to shoot the documentary at times without a lens and with handheld cameras in order to craft an audio-first cinematic experience. Inspired by the experience of watching a film with audio description, unseen’s often out-of-focus cinematography is not to simulate the experience of a blind viewer, but an invitation to watch a film by listening as opposed to seeing it visually. 

unseen made its world premiere at Hot Docs 2023 and made this year’s IDA Documentary Awards Features Shortlist. The film was celebrated at the 2023 Blackstar Film Festival and won the Documentary Jury Award at CAAMFest 2023 and was a nominee for the Leon Gast Award for Best Documentary, at the 24th Annual Woodstock Film Festival.  At the 2023 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival unseen won the Emerging Filmmaker Award, Special Jury Mention and the Audience Award. 

unseen is a co-presentation with Latino Public Broadcasting (LPB) and POV. The director is Set Hernandez and the producers are Hernandez, Day Al-Mohamed, Diane Quon and Félix Endara. The co producer is Dorian Gomez Pestaña and executive producer is Diane Quon. The editor is Daniel Chávez-Ontiveros, music composer is DeAndre James Allen-Toole, Songwriter is Julie Yeeun Kim, and the impact producers are Qudsiya Naqui and Conchita Hernandez Legorreta.

unseen will have its national broadcast premiere on POV Monday, March 18 at 10pmET/9C (check local listings) on the PBS television channel, and will be available to stream until June 16, 2024 via pbs.org, and the PBS App. 

Check out the film’s trailer below: