first person

accounts

Loch Phillipps
Director

A good first showing

For a filmmaker, there’s nothing quite like sharing your film with a large audience. For an activist filmmaker, the experience is taken to another level when you feel that your film’s message has resonated with that audience.

Read on Medium

Trinh Truong
Utican

The scarcity of safety

Despite, or perhaps because of everything, I still fear the worst that could happen when my mom clocks into work. She worries about food to feed our family, even though the days of scarcity have passed. But I worry about her.

Read on Medium

Trinh Truong
Utican

A warm welcome home

Resettlement is an intimate and disarming process, contingent on both the support of many strangers and the forgiveness of the destination city in ethos.

Read on Medium

Loch Phillipps
Director

Utica and back, 47 times — What have we learned?

I may sometimes forget the value of my citizenship, but I will never forget the sense of community these new Americans are bringing to us. That’s what we are seeing in Utica.

Read on Medium

Loch Phillipps
Director

Three World Refugee Days later: some things change, others stay the same

We’ve been shooting in Utica for about 2 ½ years now. We know the people speaking on stage, those who put the event together, and many in the crowd. Plenty of them have shared parts of themselves, moments of their lives, on camera for us.

Read on Medium

more posts in medium

get

involved

Htay, coach of a Burmese soccer team in Utica's Redeemer Cup, prepares a player to sub in.
We still need to raise nearly $100,000 to finish the film and for outreach. Donating is a great way to promote what we're doing to help change the national conversation about refugee resettlement in the U.S.

Another way to help out is to sign up for our mailing list and follow us on social media. Our ability to demonstrate interest in our films and our work will help us find distribution for the film and help us build partnerships with stakeholders.