Controversial negotiations about hostages often get the headlines, but the heavy process of freeing hostages is kept secret now has been kept secret

Don’t take prisoners, A documentary that premiered at the South by Southwest Film & TV Festival 2025, follows the Salvadoran -Eyvin Hernandez family in Los Angeles while they fight to free him from a dialed brutal prison in Venezuela, where he was wrongly held hostage after he went on holiday.

It highlights the work of Roger Carstens, who worked from 2020 to 2025 as a special presidential envoy for hostages in the United States. He led Hernandez’s case and gave a crew to have him follow throughout the entire process, a glimpse of the complex and clandestine negotiations that must be set that must occur to the release of conductors.

Directors Adam Ciralsky and Subrata de Spoked with Yahoo Entertainment about the film.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How did you discover this story and decided that it was a good subject for a documentary?

Ciralsky: It started with a conversation on the roof with Roger Carstens in August 2022. He casually said that 25% of his workload concerned people in Venezuela as a special presidential envoy for hostage cases. I thought, “That is unusual, tell me more!” Long story short, a month or later I ended up at the asphalt in San Antonio when two planes came to seven people – five Citgo managers, plus Osman Khan and Matthew Heath. Seven people walked a plane and it was an incredibly emotional reunion that was very difficult to catch on an iPhone. I cried and everyone cried. I have never been struck with seven families who have been reunited. But that joy changed very quickly to something else when we realized that Eyvin Hernandez had been left behind. He is a public defender of La County who left our government in the house of Dreams, this Hellhole Prison in South America.

By: During our collaborative relationship, which has overstrained for more than 20 years, the stories about hostages have chased us. At every historic moment – every story in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Venezuela – we have seen it as a brutal, geopolitric kind of sword game with human lives. It was really important to us that it was more than just a talk point, for people to understand the actual costs. We all know the headlines about controversial hostages, but there are always countless others. Who are those families who do not have the same resources to get that time and attention?

Ciralsky: We knew that the family received a phone call from the American government and said, “Your loved one, Eyvin, will not come home,” and it was for a very bureaucratic reason. He was not technically referred to as incorrectly detained. When someone is wrongly held, it is as if a bomb ends in the family.

By: You can’t really live a life. There are many Hollywood versions of this, but the reality is much grim and brutal.

Ciralsky: By having cameras present, I think we have seen two things: one was the incredible belief that this family has that somehow, Roger would find a way to get Eyvin out. We had no idea how long this would take, how much it would cost and where we should go. I went to seven countries and we filmed in three of them. The other is that the Eyvin family from Compton, whose interactions with the federal government had been at best, is not about having no political power – not a juice – and they transform them into this incredibly powerful lobby store. It is amazing for someone like Pedro, the father of Eyvin, who is not born in this country and has limited education, to invite the White House to make his business and it works.

I was struck by the opening of the documentary, which states that dozens of Americans are currently being held hostage and the methods used to achieve their release have so far been dressed in secret. Why do you think that’s?

By: The government and all people will tell you that it is because the risk is so high because it means a human right. I think they say, “There is just too much back and forth.” But once you take a look at the actual process, you realize that, despite the whole heart that goes into it, there is also a lot of bureaucracy. Like any institutional thing where different organizations are intended to work together, there can be roadblocks there. And nobody wants it to be public, right? But families talk a lot about that. Out of respect for the process and because the end goal is to get a family member out, everyone just goes with it. Even if you look at what happens when hostages are released, you often exchange really bad people for really good people. That is difficult to see, but that is its reality.

Ciralsky: The countries that are going to take hostage are not our allies. They are our worst, most loaded opponents. It is a really bitter pill to swallow that we have to go to their beats and close deals, whether it is the “Narco -Neefjes” and Alex Saab [traded for the seven hostages freed from] Venezuela or Victor Boot for Brittany Griner in Russia. The government likes to keep this top secret because it is an asymmetrical weapon.

Why do you think Roger – and the US government – spends so much time dealing with hostages in Venezuela, specifically?

Ciralsky: The moment we were filming, you have to look at the results that a leader like Nicolás Maduro has had when holding American citizens. He was able to get attention from the US government and backchannel conversations about some things that were personally important, and some controversial convicted criminals in the US

By: Venezuela is a strategic opponent, but it is not at the top of the list – North Korea, Iran, Russia and China come first. But by capturing Americans, this is their way of calling our bell. They attract our attention.

Ciralsky: Some actions of our government led their government to take Americans. Alec Saab’s detainment was in their head as a motivator to take Americans. It is a very medieval practice that continues. Making hostages is a biblical plague that continues so far.

I know you didn’t know how the film would end – that Eyvin would be reunited with his family – when you started filming. Would you continue to follow the story until he got back home?

By: When it started, we knew we would follow Roger’s work, and then we were dedicated to the Eyvin family. That wore us. Don’t take prisoners Is about both the promise and the danger of documentary filmmaking.

Ciralsky: It promises that you can have a hell of an end, that we have received, but I will tell you – there was a lot of danger. There was a period of six months in which it was not only ugly, it was unsafe, and our relationship as a country with Venezuela was just crued. It is as if the floor opened and there was still a dungeon. We had nothing between June 2023 and December 2023 when we heard that there was a deal in the making.

I read that Roger is Carstens Don’t work anymore As a special envoy since President Trump took office. What does he do now?

By: He is a great American patriot and official and he will stay that way. But having him no longer in the case is part of why this story is so important. He brought many people home.

Ciralsky: This is the hostage Enterprise – Victory has a thousand fathers and failure is an orphan. Roger felt that every day. He would go home every night and everything he would think about were the people he failed. Every time he came out if someone like Brittney Griner, Evan Gershkovich or Paul Whelan, other people would get the honor, but they were not those at 2 o’clock calling the family. This has become a sexy area of ​​foreign policy where everyone seems to run for football. There is a scene in which he is in their living room – what other rule of government is there an official who comes to your house to cry with you, drink with you, to eat with you and plan with you? Roger took that. You could see him, in the course of this film, aging.

Don’t take prisoners In premiere on March 8 in South by Southwest.