Through the Night, a new documentary about “women’s work,” essential workers, and how American parents are struggling to balance work and childcare, is receiving critical acclaim at a time when all three themes are central to life in the United States. The film was produced by Harlem-based Firelight Media, which supports emerging filmmakers of color and cultivates audiences for their work. It was directed and produced by Loira Limbal, a Sundance Institute Fellow and a former Ford Foundation JustFilms/Rockwood Fellow.

National Public Radio selected Through the Night as one of its December documentaries of the week. 

The film is an intimate portrait of three New York mothers whose lives intersect at a 24-hour daycare center: one works the overnight shift at a hospital; one holds down three jobs to support her family, and one has spent two decades caring for the children of parents with nowhere else to turn. It showcases the multiplicity of “women’s work”—paid, underpaid and unpaid; emotional and physical; domestic and career-oriented—and negotiating the terms of a dignified existence under the three arrows of racism, sexism, and capitalism in America.

Limbal, senior vice president for programs for Firelight Media, has worked at various community-based organizations in New York City, including the Point Community Development Corporation, the Dominican Women’s Development Center, and Sista II Sista. In 2006 she founded The Reel X Project, social justice and creative filmmaking space for young women of color in the Bronx. She lives in the Bronx with her two children.

To learn more and watch at home, visit ThroughTheNightFilm.com/watch.