Help Cruz Bring His Timely Sci-Fi Horror Film to Life

My name is Cruz Castillo. I’m a filmmaker and a fighter for my community. I’m a brown kid born and raised on the streets of L.A., born of Indigenous roots and descended from Mexican-Indigenous women who crossed the border for a fighting chance at something better.

This project is deeply personal. Just weeks before the ICE raids hit Los Angeles and the country, kidnapping and persecuting innocent brown families, I wrote a SciFi-Horror script imagining this exact future. The scary thing is that the future came faster than I expected.

What began as a cautionary tale has become a reflection of our present. What I thought I had time to tell is now urgent. This short film isn’t just art—it’s hope. And it needs to be made now.

Round-Up unfolds over the course of a single harrowing night. Set in a near-future dystopian version of El Paso, Texas, the film follows the Jaime family as they prepare for a desperate escape across the U.S. border into Mexico while under threat from a militarized immigration system.

Round-Up is a nightmarish vision of state violence, digital propaganda, and cultural erasure. A SciFi-Horror story rooted in the reality of ICE raids, forced labor, and family separation.

This film questions how a government obsessed with control might dehumanize its own citizens for the sake of optics. Who's watching you?

If this story resonates with you, if you believe in the power of film to challenge systems and protect freedom, then I ask for your help. Donate what you can. Share this campaign. Help us bring this vision to life. Because stories like this don’t get told unless we tell them ourselves. The time is now. Let’s make this film together.