Opening at NYC’s Quad Cinema today, Friday, July 29 and opening at LA’s Laemmle Music Hall on August 5: THE HARVEST/LA COSECHA
Director U Roberto Romano, who has made other projects on child labor around the world, turns his camera on child exploitation in the US with this project about the children of migrant farm workers. Helping to generate media awareness for the film is its executive producer, actress Eva Longoria. The doc made its world premiere at IDFA last fall.
Twelve-year-old Zulema, 14-year-old Perla, and 16-year-old Victor are not like other American kids their age. As the children of migrant farm workers, they follow their parents, and their parents must go where there is work. But, beyond being subject to this nomadic existence, to help make ends meet, they join them in working upwards of twelve hours a day, every day of the week, picking crops – working illegally, and sacrificing their childhoods and their education in the process. Romano’s film effectively presents the realities of these children’s lives, and the cost they have to bear, continuing a cycle of poverty. Of the three subjects, Zulema is the most compelling – circumstances give her the potential to change her fortune and find stability. The other two characters are more static, standing out more as examples of other children in the same position, but not necessarily as fleshed out or compelling as Zulema, who could probably have sustained interest as a singular subject. Still, as a whole, the film succeeds in showing audiences some uncomfortable truths behind agricultural production in our own country, and the economic disparities that force many families to make difficult decisions about their own children.
what (not) to doc 