It is March 11, 2020, and I’m at JFK airport on my way to London for the premiere of FROM HERE at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival. As I hand over my bag, a White House press conference takes over the airport monitors: “Travel will be suspended from Europe to the U.S. due to the COVID-19 virus.” Shock courses through the airport. If we leave, will we be able to get home? I make some calls. The festival says, “We are moving forward, but it’s up to you whether you come.” My collaborators say, “You can’t turn back now.” My mother says, “You know that it will probably be canceled, right?” The woman next to me is crying, asking to have her baggage removed.
I gather my things and get on the plane.
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By the time I got on that airplane, I had been working on FROM HERE for fifteen years. The research began while I was an undergraduate and over the years it grew from an installation, to a film, to a multi-platform project, to a network of over 100 collaborators. And while I had many other jobs to pay the bills, I worked on it consistently.
When we finally “locked-picture” on FROM HERE in January of 2020, it was more than a film, it was my young life’s work. The questions that led me to undertake the film were rooted in my childhood aching to find my own belonging and questions of how to advance racial and social justice beyond the limitations of the nation state. Through the years, I grew a deep understanding in the inherent belonging and interdependence of all people as a guiding frame. I hoped FROM HERE would help foster conversations about belonging beyond our imaginations, beyond nations, beyond borders and build our collective power to create those new realities.
Over the decade, the political power of the far-right grew in both Europe and the U.S. on the backs of anti-immigrant politics, and with it a politics of racism, nativism, and attacks on our basic democracy. Another Trump election was on the horizon that year, and releasing FROM HERE felt existential. I needed FROM HERE to come out in 2020. I was fiercely determined to use the film to foster solidarity and action against the dangerous agenda that was certain under another four years of a Trump presidency. We were planning a year full of live impact events, focusing on swing states leading up to the U.S election.
But my sense of urgency was also far more personal. For fifteen years, we received no money from the film industry and little from formal funding bodies. Not because we didn’t try. Every year, the strength of white nationalist politics grew before our eyes, but funders and programmers told us the film wasn’t timely. While the industry support remained limited, the project expanded into communities as our team grew. We crowdfunded and got really good at getting things done through our volunteer network. The protagonists in the film came of age, and so did the team. Working so many hours unpaid became harder to sustain as we bore increasing responsibilities, personally and professionally.
When we found out in January that the film was invited to premiere in London at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival (HRWFF), the first festival to whom we had submitted the final cut, I was ecstatic. HRWFF programs important and excellent films. We worked around the clock to finish the final cut. Around that same time, news of a novel virus in Wuhan, China began to trickle in. Like most everyone in my life, I tuned it out. Then the first U.S. deaths were reported just outside of my hometown, Seattle. The cancellations started, and it began to sink in that life as we knew it might change dramatically.
Compulsively reading the news, I moved forward. I grabbed an N95 mask from my toolbox (this was before the shortage), crafted disinfectant wipes out of paper towels and bleach, packed posters, a camera and a party outfit.
I arrived in London for the opening night of the festival. At the sparsely attended party, I discovered I was the only director who made the journey. The next afternoon, one of the festival programmers sat me down in tears. They had to cancel the rest of the festival.
I walked out of the imposing architecture of London’s Barbican arts center onto the streets in a daze. People spilled out of pubs onto the sidewalks as the UK political leadership, like the U.S, was still minimizing the virus. What would come next for me, for the film, for the world? I got on the first plane back to the U.S. and the lockdowns began.
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I wish I could say that I bounced back from that experience quickly, ready to adapt to a new reality. To be honest, I was heartbroken, physically exhausted, and entirely disoriented. For years I had put my faith in the idea that all of the collective sacrifices, those of the team and protagonists, would make sense when we were able to finally show the film. I was running on empty, but imagined that I would be regenerated by connecting with audiences. And while I never expected profit, I hoped that FROM HERE would lay the groundwork for future career opportunities for the entire team that would support our long-term sustainability.
Instead, back in Seattle, I joined the legions of filmmakers attending urgent webinars about “What do we do now?!” Like so many others, the film industry was upside down. My fears vacillated from the personal to the systemic: Would Trump use the virus as an excuse to postpone or suspend the elections? Would FROM HERE disappear into the COVID-19 void, another small casualty in the global tragedy? What would happen to the undocumented workers unable to recieve any pandemic relief despite their “essential” work, or the refugees now dangerously trapped behind the U.S./Mexico border? How would I pay my bills as my freelance gigs were canceled one by one?
Yet, there was a sense of familiarity in all this. The experience of making FROM HERE often felt characterized by a lack of control. I was at the whims of the life circumstances of my protagonists; of a team that had grown a momentum of its own; and of a film industry with gatekeepers of all kinds. I had spent years working long hours alone and collaborating with a dispersed team through video meetings. During those years, I often took inspiration from the protagonists in FROM HERE, who, as Akim so aptly put, had to “mutate to survive” in systems that were designed to exclude. How must we mutate now?
Relatively quickly, festivals began moving online. And quickly, I decided that I wouldn’t hold the film back, despite the risk. Traditionally, filmmakers are discouraged from doing virtual screenings if they hoped to secure distribution. Capitalism demands scarcity, and the film industry is no different. But it was 2020, the election was upon us, and the entire world felt apocalyptic. What would I be holding out for?
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These days when I encounter a friend I haven’t spoken with for a while, they often ask some version of: “How does it feel to finally have your film out in the world?” It is hard to answer honestly. Releasing FROM HERE during this pandemic has been numbing–it is an enormous material blow not to be able to have a live release of a project of this nature. But as a person who has not been sick or lost a close loved one, I am immensely privileged. How do we share these deeply personal losses while holding perspective of the magnitude of suffering all around the world?
By the time FROM HERE’s festival run is done, we will have participated in at least seventeen virtual festivals in seven countries. Parallel, we have done workshops and events with schools, museums, and partner organizations. I am grateful for all of this, especially the audiences we may never have been able to connect with in-person. At the same time, aside from two physically distanced festivals, we have not been able to sit with an audience, hear them laugh and cry, or listen to stories about their lives outside of the theater door. We have not been able to meet other inspiring filmmakers, activists, or distributors. While I deeply appreciate every email, text and virtual Q&A, I long to feel the pulsing energy of a room full of people who shared an experience and are ready to take action, and transform.
There continues to be so much unknown, but my commitment to bring FROM HERE to those who want and need it is strong, and FROM HERE’s impact continues to unfold.
We have just onboarded three impact producers to bring the film to communities across the US, Germany, and internationally. I am so excited about the work that Olga Gerstenberger, Chelo Alvarez-Stehle, and Yuniya Khan will do. That said, this pandemic encouraged me to appreciate what the team has already through our work together. Before even releasing the film, we had participated in or organized 200 events that center immigrant and racial justice.
It is even more exciting when I look at the ripples of our work. The project inspired one of the film’s protagonists, Miman Jasharovski, to initiate a new campaign in Germany (more on this soon). It planted seeds for our collaborator Kerstin Meissner’s book Relational Becoming. It fostered numerous careers in immigrant justice and filmmaking. Each of FROM HERE’s protagonists told me that they feel proud of the film–which is an incredible testament to our work together.
The reasons for hope and despair are ever-present. As we speak, millions of Ukrainians are being forced from their homes. At the same time, there have been incredible acts of mutual aid and solidarity from people around the world. What if we brought that potential for solidarity to the people of Afghanistan, Palestine, Yemen, or the refugees at our Southern U.S. border?
There is so much work to be done to replace political systems built on colonialism, racial capitalism, and scarcity with systems built on human dignity, belonging and abundance. I believe that it can be done, and we are the ones to do it.
Yesterday, the newly formed German board of With Wings and Roots met with Olga and me. As we checked in, reflecting on the situation in Ukraine, people shared their complex feelings of seeing the European asylum system work for Ukrainians after decades of shutting its doors to racialized refugees from Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia fleeing atrocities no less extreme. This was not an abstract conversation–several on the call came to Germany as refugees, others had family from Ukraine, still others have worked on issues of asylum for years. I felt immense gratitude grappling with these questions with the humans gathered on that call.
The pandemic has caused so much unequal destruction and trauma, but it has also reinforced the core belief which sparked this project fifteen years ago. Our survival as a species will come from our ability to see our fates as woven together across borders, reimagine the systems and identities we take for granted, to collaborate to create better ones. I made a film that does this in the most literal way–visualizes our kinship in struggle and strength–with the intent of making these conversations accessible and our interdependence palpable. I have renewed faith that our work will contribute to this generations-long work.
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Two years into the pandemic, I am still allowing my grief. It took me nine months to complete this writing, each time encountering a new wave of sorrow, doubt in the value of my story, unable to make meaning of the experience. I returned because I believe this grief can sharpen my gratitude for life and strengthen my ability to hold its complexity–and maybe honor some of your grief as well.
