SXSW Doc ‘Take No Prisoner' Follows America's Top Hostage Negotiator in Battle to Free L.A. Public Defender From Venezuelan Prison
In 'Take No Prisoners,' director Adam Ciralsky and Subrata De were given unprecedented access to America's former top hostage negotiator, Roger Carstens, as he battles to free L.A. public defender Eyvin Hernandez from a Venezuelan prison.
The opening sequence of the documentary could be mistaken for a Jason Bourne film. On a tarmac in Miami, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro's nephews — convicted drug traffickers — are loaded onto a U.S. government plane to be exchanged for seven Americans: Matthew Heath, Osman Khan, and the so-called Citgo Five. Ciralsky was the only journalist-filmmaker on the tarmac at Joint Base San Antonio when the newly freed hostages arrived.
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But Ciralsky and De decided not to focus 'Take No Prisoners' on that 2022 recovery, which was the largest of its kind since Americans were released from Iran in 1981. Instead, the duo follow Carstens as he attempts to free Hernandez, an L.A. County deputy public defender who, in 2022, took a vacation to Colombia. There, he joined a friend on a trip to the Colombian-Venezuelan border to resolve a passport issue. At the border, Hernandez and his friend were intercepted by Venezuelan forces and jailed in a maximum security prison for 'criminal association and conspiracy.'
'While there was plenty of gold in retelling the events leading up to the initial Miami release (of the seven Americans), as filmmakers, Subrata and I felt that the odyssey to rescue Eyvin might make for a compelling vérité documentary,' says Ciralsky. 'We had no idea how difficult that would be, how long it would take, or how much it would cost.'
In 2022, Ciralsky was given unprecedented access by the Biden administration to embed in a hostage negotiation process with Carstens. Remarkably, the White House and Maduro's government allowed Ciralsky to observe, and in some cases, film negotiations that stretched from the tiny island of Canouan in the Grenadines to the Venezulan regime's stronghold in Caracas. Ciralsky ultimately turned his time with Carstens into a doc and a 2024 Vanity Fair article also titled 'Take No Prisoners,' which Lionsgate Television optioned and Hulu is developing into a scripted project titled 'The Envoy' with showrunner Alexi Hawley.
Variety spoke with Ciralsky and De about 'Take No Prisoners' ahead of the film's world premiere at SXSW on March 8.
What drew you to tell the story of Eyvin Hernandez's family's fight to get him back home?
Ciralsky: For all of the celebrity and media attention around Brittney Griner and Evan Gershkovich for good reason, because of their platform, we couldn't believe that an L.A. County public defender was rotting in a Venezuelan prison, and nobody was taking notice. It's necessarily advocacy, but we were the only people continually following Eyvin's story. There would be an occasional news hit in Los Angeles, but nobody was there following the journey of this family who didn't know any senators and were not friends with their congressmen.
De: It's also important to note that Roger treated everybody with the same level of priority. That was really important to illustrate. Roger really prioritized every American and their families in the same way. So, being able to see behind the scenes, which many people don't get to see, was really important to us.
The access that the Biden administration gave you was unbelievable. Why do you think they did that?
Ciralsky: I think they genuinely felt that this was one of their foreign policy achievements – securing the freedom of Americans from China, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela. Also, there wasn't another side, a constituency in Washington that was saying, 'You know what? I'm for keeping Americans in prison (in foreign countries).' So, it was that weird issue where they are like, 'Who is going to criticize us?'
De: Also, I think that because it was a documentary where we were following the story long-term, there just wasn't this kind of frenetic activity over managing stories that might be coming out the day of. So in their day-to-day, it felt far more measured in the sense.
This film transitions between moments of intense governmental and political drama, and moments of sympathetic, emotional anguish with the Hernandez family. How did you find the balance between these two contrasting tones?
De: The people at the center of these hostage situations, both in government and the families, live in a slow – often drawn out – high-wire emotional state. For the families, it's a visceral nightmare. There isn't a moment when they aren't living in this miasma of the unknown. Plagued by constant questions. Could we be doing more? What is happening to our person? And emotionally tortured by glimmers of hope – and then massive let-downs. The intense political and government drama is also an emotional roller coaster for the teams involved. They get so close to getting someone home, as you see in the film, and then, an obstacle or unknown block shuts it all down. It's crushing. So the family and hostage rescue team stories are very much interwoven. It was a shared emotional landscape
How are you feeling about finding distribution for 'Take No Prisoners' out of SXSW?
Ciralsky: We have some interest. It's this weird out-of-order, non-sequential thing that we have going on. There's an article, then the article will become a scripted series, and then the documentary comes out.
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