New documentary recounts ‘free-for-all attitude of cruelty’ toward axed federal employees

When the documentary first features Katie Sandlin, a former employee at the National Institutes of Health, she apologizes that her car is making a “weird noise” but promises that it’ll stop once she gets on the road. 

Sandlin — who was fired last year during the Trump administration’s downsizing of the federal workforce,  after serving in her job for only a month — shared with the filmmakers some of the comments she had received online since posting about her job loss. 

“You’re an oversized, unhealthy, bloated, fat f***, and thank God you’ve been fired,” she reads from her laptop. “Hopefully, soon at least you’ll not have the money to keep eating like a pig.” 

Sandlin is one of several fired, laid off or otherwise pushed out civil servants featured in “Heist,” an Emmy-nominated short documentary that chronicles the personal and political impacts of federal job losses during the first half of 2025. 

“We really felt we had to archive this no matter what happened,” said Ilene Kristen, one of the film’s producers. “No matter whether we could make this into a film — or not a film — we knew that we had to to capture this.” 

The filmmakers, for instance, recorded newly unemployed federal employees trying to meet with lawmakers in the halls of Congress, asking them to push back on the administration’s agency job cuts and expressing concerns about the continued effectiveness of the programs they worked on. Several Capitol Hill offices called the police to remove the individuals. 

There’s also many clips of axed civil servants exiting their former headquarters with the contents of desks and offices. At the U.S. Agency for International Development, workers were each assigned a 15-minute time slot to clear out. 

“This happened because of a minority of people with agendas that are very destructive and greed-oriented,” said Rebecca Cammisa, the film’s director and a two-time Oscar nominee. “It was a free-for-all attitude of cruelty.” 

The Trump administration argues that its agency staff cuts and reorganizations — including at USAID, which lost nearly all of its workforce after it was folded into the State Department — will enhance efficiency and slash spending. 

The filmmakers behind “Heist,” however, contend that the downsizing of the civil service is benefiting individuals allied with the president. For example, the documentary highlights that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, one of the top agencies targeted for job cuts by the Elon Musk-headed Department of Government Efficiency, had been set to regulate one of Musk’s companies.

“We can't even have real debates about policy and what we think is right when government is no longer honest and the levers of power are quietly being pulled by the people who pay for that access,” said David Cowan, one of the producers. 

The producing team is continuing the focus on civil servants; their next planned documentary will be about former feds running for office. 

“Federal workers aren't people who are just purged and are down,” Cammisa said. “They've created organizations to help feed people. They've created organizations to help each other. Federal workers have created all kinds of things now that they're free to do it — and run for office because they're trying to reclaim government for the people.” 

Still, the filmmakers are worried that the federal firings and layoffs could leave lasting damage to public services. With this in mind, they began and ended the documentary at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial on the National Mall. 

“I think it was a good framework because these are the policies that are being screwed around with [by the Trump administration] that were part of [FDR’s] New Deal to put people back to work and to give people certain protections,” Kristen said. 

The documentary’s closing shot features a young person taking a picture of statues in the FDR Memorial representing an unemployed couple during the Great Depression. The tourist puts her “Make America Great Again” baseball cap on them, remarking, “They became Trump supporters,” with a laugh. 

“After the young lady left, Rebecca sat and cried,” Kristen recalled. “This is our country, folks. Like it or not, this is our country.”