Through the Night (2020)
Director: Loira Limbal Run Time: 75 min min. Rating: NR
Starring: Deloris "Nunu" Hogan, Patrick "PopPop" Hogan
Presented in the Virtual Screening Room in partnership with Long Shot Factory.
“It’s hard to visualize how the system has so thoroughly failed the working class, but Loira Limbal brings the abstract into arrestingly human terms”
– Stephen Saito, Moveable Fest
About the film:
Official Selection of Tribeca Film Festival, DocNYC, and AFI Docs 2020.
An intimate look at Dee’s Tots Childcare, the family-owned 24-hour childcare center run by Deloris and Patrick Hogan in New Rochelle, New York. Since the late 1990s, the Hogans have provided around-the-clock childcare needs and basic schooling for children while their parents work longer hours and multiple jobs to make ends meet.
Through the Night shines a light on the everyday struggles for working parents, and America’s need for a better social safety net for overlooked communities.
About the filmmaker:
Feature directorial debut for Afro-Latinx filmmaker and DJ Loira Limbal, who has dedicated her career to the creation of art that affirms communities of color.
In 2006, she founded The Reel X Project, a social justice and creative filmmaking space for young women of color in the Bronx. She currently serves as the Senior Vice President for Programs at Firelight Media, and in June 2020, she launched the online series Beyond Resilience with Black, Indigenous and POC filmmakers exploring challenges faced by underrepresented communities in the industry during crises.
Limbal’s first film Estilo Hip Hop was a co-production of ITVS and aired on PBS in 2009. The film chronicles the lives of three political activists from Brazil, Chile, and Cuba who inspire young people through the art of hip hop. Her feature Through the Night, led by an all-female filmmaking team, went through The Sundance Institute’s 2019 Documentary Edit and Story Lab as well as the Creative Producing Documentary Lab.
After the COVID-19 pandemic radically altered everyday life, Stephen Saito interviewed her about making a film about essential workers —
“I feel like I’ve had the whole range of emotions that you could imagine from anger and rage at the fact that as a society, we’re so comfortable calling these folks essential even though we really treat them as sacrificial.”
Read more from director Limbal at Moveable Fest.
See all virtual titles