The Caretaker + The Mayor

Streaming video - 2015

The Caretaker and The Mayor are two powerful short films that explore contemporary immigration issues in the U.S. through intimate portraits of relationships between recent immigrants, and those who came to the U.S. generations ago. The Caretaker is a short film about the relationship between an immigrant caretaker and an elderly woman in the last months of her life. Joesy, a Fijian immigrant, works long hours providing live-in care for 95-year-old Haru Tsurumoto. Through intimate and quiet scenes, we explore Joesy's complex relationship with Haru. The two respect one another, because at different times, both have felt like outsiders in the U.S. - Joesy as an undocumented immigrant who fears she could be sent back to Fiji, and Haru as ...a Japanese American who was sent to the internment camps during World War II. The Mayor is an intimate portrait of a small-town Southern Republican Mayor and his profound and unexpected connection to a mixed-status family of Mexican immigrants. Paul Bridges, the conservative Republican Mayor of Uvalda, Georgia, speaks fluent Spanish and is integrally connected to the Latino immigrant community in his town. Bridges has been a major part of the Hernandez family's life for over a decade and many of the members of the family are undocumented. After the State of Georgia adopts harsh anti-immigrant laws that make it a criminal act to drive or house undocumented people, Mayor Bridges stands up for his community and the Hernandez family both at home, and on the National stage. more