All We Carry

DIRECTOR STATEMENT

In 2018 I was working as a freelance immigration reporter in Colombia when I decided to fly to Mexico to cover the migrant caravan. There, I met Magdiel, Mirna, and baby Joshua, and followed their story all the way to the border. After spending three weeks together, I walked with them to the US port of entry, hugged them goodbye, and walked away thinking “I hope that I still know them when they finally finish this process.” Back then, I didn’t know that the first piece I published about them would be the beginning of a five-year journey following a single family’s story.

A few months later, I did a second short piece about them, for which I was able to visit and film an interview with Magdiel while he was in a detention center in California and visit Mirna while she was living with extended family in Washington State. Months later, when I visited them in Seattle after they had settled in the beachfront home given to them by members of a synagogue there, I thought our professional relationship was over; I stayed in their home, I filmed their 4th of July party for fun, and when they asked if I would be a bridesmaid in the wedding that the synagogue community was throwing them, I said “yes!”

When I began meeting the community members from the synagogue, it struck me that I felt like I’d known this congregation my whole life. They reminded me of all of the parents in my own community growing up. I realized that I was in a unique position—I had lived in Latin America and covered immigration for several years, I had bonded with Magdiel and Mirna while accompanying them on the intense experience of the caravan, and they had landed in a group of people who couldn’t have felt more familiar to me.

And, I had lived in border regions and covered immigration long enough to know that their story of being embraced and financially supported by perfect strangers was a one-in-a-million experience for new arrivals to the US, and that it wasn’t a coincidence that this was happening during the Trump administration.

Every character in our film is motivated in part by changing a narrative, whether it be their own, or that of how the US treats immigrants. All We Carry pushes the viewer to consider: What would it take for you to flee from your country, your home, and your family? If it were you, would you choose to participate in supporting this family if it might put you and your community at risk? Our story also begs the question: If this process is so difficult for a family with a whole community behind them, what must it be like for an asylum seeker who does not receive support or institutional aid while their case is in process?

After covering this topic as a reporter, my motivation for making this film came from my desire to show all the human moments that you never see on the news, because those are precisely the moments people can empathize with and relate to. I see myself less as a journalist or a filmmaker, and more as a storyteller who tries to let each story dictate the format and length in which it must be told. Magdiel and Mirna’s openness, vulnerability, strength, and charisma are what give them the power to capture the hearts of global audiences for an 80-minute film.

In March of 2020, as airports across the region began shutting, I left my home base in Colombia and relocated to Seattle. I remained in Mirna and Magdiel’s COVID pod for nine months and a month after their asylum hearing, I had the opportunity to film them tell a Zoom-full of their teary-eyed friends that against all the odds, they were granted asylum.

Mirna and Magdiel have turned me into a filmmaker, and they have turned our film into so much more than an immigration story—it is a love story about healing, community, and marriage. And it’s the story of a family coming together to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds in their attempt to find their way home.