Exclusive: Director Loira Limbal On Her Greenwich International Film Festival Win For 2021 Best Social Impact Film Award For ‘Through The Night’

Moments ago, the Greenwich International Film Festival (GIFF) announced Loira Limbal’s documentary THROUGH THE NIGHT was the winner of the 2021 Best Social Impact Film Award, which includes a $10,000 cash prize presented by Ann Bresnan Young.  Honorable mentions go to Mohammad Rasoulof’s THERE IS NO EVIL and Matthew Heineman’s THE BOY FROM MEDELLÍN. 

The award ceremony for the Best Social Impact Film took place virtually on Saturday, February 20 at 5pm EST.  The winner was selected by GIFF jurors Ann Bresnan Young, President of the Bill and Ann Bresnan Foundation, Ryan Harrington, VP of National Geographic Documentary Films and filmmaker Eric Heimbold, Owner of Marabou Pictures LLC & Eric Heimbold Studio.

THROUGH THE NIGHT is a cinema verité portrait of three working NY mothers whose lives intersect at a 24-hour daycare center: a mother working the overnight shift as an essential worker at a hospital; another holding down three jobs to support her family; and a woman who for over two decades has cared for the children of parents with nowhere else to turn. 

In speaking exclusively with BlackFilmandTV.com, Limbal talks about the film and what the award means to her.

Congrats on the win. Let's go back and what drew you to make this project as your first feature?

Loira Limbal: So the inspiration for the film is both personal and political. I learned about the daycare that is featured in the film via an article that I read a few years ago. The article was really looking at the reality that in the United States, more and more people have to work more than one job to make ends meet. Oftentimes those jobs require overnight hours, regular hours. They featured the daycare and some of the families who rely on Nunu and and Patrick for care. I was reading this article, I had this sort of sensation of almost reading my own childhood story and my mother's story, because my mother raised four girls in New York City as a single parent, and she was a home health aide for the night shift.

That was a minimum wage job. I was captivated by reading about other people that at the time, I didn't know, but who shared so many important life details that were so similar to my own upbringing. I sat with that for a second and realized that very little had changed. I’m in my 40s now. My mother raised me over 30 something years ago, and that people are still in similar positions. That angered me. And as a filmmaker, it also sort of motivated me to make a film that captured this universe that I knew, and that I know so well.

When anybody makes a documentary, unlike a feature film, there is no end game. Did you know what you're signing up for? Was it challenging not knowing how you're going to end it when you started it?

Loira Limbal: Oh, yes, absolutely. I had a sense of what I was signing up for because I had made one documentary before. It wasn't a feature length, but what they call more a medium length film. I've been on this journey of following and documenting people's lives. I also worked in documentary film as my full time day job and so I had a sense. I was very worried about exactly what I was signing up for. I was worried about my bandwidth to be able to see it through and worried about starting something that I wouldn't be able to complete, primarily, because I am also a single working mother. I have two children. I work a full time job that is really fulfilling, but also very demanding. Here I was taking on this other passion projects. So there was a constant fear that something would happen, and I wouldn't be able to see it through. But through the process of making the film, both my collaboration with the film protagonists, and with my crew, it felt like we were on on a truly collaborative journey together. The more that I communicated on what was going, on what was happening, what we needed to do, and what some of the challenges were, we were often able to problem solve together. Throughout the journey, I brought my anxiety level down and ease into the trust and the relationship building process.

Are caregivers considered essential workers?

Loira Limbal: That's a great question. No, they're not. They're often left out of the conversation about essential workers. You don't hear about childcare providers. You don't hear about home health aides. You hear about nursing homes, the cases and the deaths and this sort of thing, but you don't hear about nursing home workers as essential workers. I think we still have a ways to go to make that conversation about essential workers more accurate and more complete. This is something that Nunu and Patrick themselves have said. They do feel left out and forgotten, overlooked and still yet again, not completely respected, even though they are essential. 

When you get an award like this, how does that make you feel?

Loira Limbal: It’s really humbling to just create something. Something that is in your brain, and then you create it and put it out into the world and you see that it has resonance for other people. That's always really humbling to just be able to experience that and sit with that. In terms of the win itself. I think it's so meaningful because we are talking about people that are overlooked and undervalued and overworked during a period where the stakes are so high. In a moment like this the recognition, not necessarily for me to ask as a filmmaker, but for them and their story, and what they mean in the world, is truly invaluable. The cash prize also really matters.

We have an Essential Care Fund on GoFundMe that we launched early in the pandemic, and we've been able to raise over $70,000. We've given out cash grants to take care providers who care for the children of essential workers. The few that have remained open are struggling for lots of different reasons. We've been giving out cash grants and the spirit of mutual aid and solidarity and normalcy as a way to say symbolism. The symbolic gestures of applauding for essential workers and banging my pots, that's great, that's a lovely, but it's not enough. We have to figure out ways to take care of the people that take care of all of us, and a concrete way to do that. The cash prize means a lot because we'll put it towards that and it's part of a larger campaign effort that we have.

The film has been out since December, so where can people see the doc?

Loira Limbal: It’s still playing in a few virtual theaters. The information is on our website, which is https://www.throughthenightfilm.com/. You go on the website, you select the theater that you want to watch it through, and then you watch from home. It will also be on POV on PBS in May, the day after Mother's Day.