Local filmmakers Eric Byler and Annabel Park. (Photo: Eric Byler)

When Eric Byler and Annabel Park began filming in Prince William County, Va., in the summer of 2007, the controversy they were documenting hadn't yet become a national debate. A county supervisor had proposed a resolution requiring police, given probable cause, to racially profile check the immigration status of an offender, no matter how small the offense. In essence, the law was asking officers to stop anyone who looked Latin American — as if there were such a look — and ask for documentation. (Bent license plate and brown skin? Let me see your papers, sir.) The resulting movie, 9500 Liberty, about the divide in the community and the film's role in the debate, was completed last year and then hit the festival circuit, arriving at the Phoenix Film Festival this past April, the very same week that the Arizona House of Representatives passed a similar law, SB 1070.

"It sounded very familiar to them," says Byler, 38, of Gainesville, who won the Dan Harkins Breakthrough Filmmaker Award at the festival. The man for whom the award is named owns the regional chain Harkins Theatres, and he wanted to screen the film throughout Arizona, so, Byler says, "We decided to open the film as an emergency theatrical release."

As SB 1070 made national news, 9500 Liberty spread to nearly 40 cities across the country, most recently screening at a New York Times–hosted event last week. Now it's about to get a nationwide audience, airing at 8 p.m. this Sunday on MTV2, mtvU, and MTV's domestic Spanish-language channel, Tr3s. This weekend also happens to be the first annual convention of the Coffee Party, a nonpartisan group founded by Byler and Park, 42, of Silver Spring, that preaches "responsible citizenship" over divisive rhetoric. The filmmakers will be joined by MTV executive Jason Rzepka for live webcasts on the organization's website just before and after the film airs.

It's only fitting that Byler and Park would broadcast the party online, given their approach to the making of 9500 Liberty. Rather than waiting to gather all the necessary footage and then editing it into a story, they uploaded clips to YouTube as the story unfolded. Some videos have received in excess of 100,000 views and more than 4,000 comments. Clearly, the community had been looking for an online forum other than the one dominating the discourse at the time: Black Velvet Bruce Lee, a hateful blog run by Greg Letiecq, whose sole purpose seems to be highlighting crimes committed by undocumented immigrants. (Letiecq is also president of Help Save Manassas, a group whose website provides a hotline for readers to "report suspected illegal aliens," and in 9500 Liberty a Board of County supervisor refers to him as a friend of Corey Stewart, who, as chairman at-large of the board, spearheaded the aforementioned proposal, called the Rule of Law Resolution.)

Byler says his film became an interactive documentary, with readers providing suggestions about where he should film next, and by employing the democratic forum of YouTube he won the trust of both sides of the debate. "We realized we were the only people in the county who everyone was willing to talk to ... because everyone was so upset with each other, and so distrustful, that no one was willing to talk to each other," he says. "So basically we found out every nuance and detail of the story. To this day, I think we know more about the story than anyone does, because people came to us."

The knew enough, anyway, to be invited to testify before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, which held a hearing on the county's proposed resolution. There, Byler made his true feelings known: "that the list of grievances the community had against the so-called illegal immigrants" — speaking Spanish, overcrowding apartments, dancing to salsa music — "weren't evidence of their suspected status." Those words turned Letiecq, with whom Byler had "developed a rapport and even friendship," against him. The blogger was also at the hearing, and, says Byler, "That's the last time he ever spoke to me, and he was shouting."

In watching the film last night, I did not lament their falling out. Rather, I wondered how Byler and Park kept their composure throughout their interviews with some of the more ignorant supporters of the Rule of Law Resolution. I shook my head at the spineless minority of county supervisors who opposed the law, but voted for it anyway. And every time Letiecq opened his mouth, I had to restrain myself from hurling a glass of water at my blameless TV.

9500 Liberty is named for the address of a wall in Manassas where an opponent of the resolution hung an enormous sign, a long letter to the community that pleaded, essentially, for sanity and human understanding. The sign was vandalized time and again. Whether you supported the resolution or opposed it, you will not feel sane while watching this film; you will not want to understand the humans on the other side. But there is a glint of hope at the end of 9500 Liberty, a sort of resuscitation of reason that suggests we might, at the least, be able to live side by side without having to call the cops on each other.