Manhattan Film Festival

A blended family, including a white-cop, find clever ways to keep police officers accountable.

Graduate students Shilpa and Hakim, a Indian woman and Black man, have been in a loving relationship for 4 years and are currently living together in harmony despite cultural differences. That is until Shilpa’s parents come to visit from India.

In 2007 Shanyeill McCloud was convicted of misdemeanor battery protecting herself and her daughter from her abusive husband, a record that upturned her life, making it nearly impossible to find employment. After almost 16 months unemployed, Shanyeill learned she was not eligible for expungement under current Wisconsin state law. Despite this, Shanyeill has dedicated herself to helping others navigate the process of receiving judicial clemency using the knowledge she gained—one of those beneficiaries being Karie Elliott, a vet tech living in Milwaukee.

On the last night of their cross-country road trip, two friends from college negotiate the terms and consequences of their potential hookup.

A teenage girl, Tess, struggles against her single, Chinese-American father as she tries to come to terms with moving to a new city. But when Tess finds her father pensively looking at an old family photo of himself as a kid back in China, the two of them have a moment of connection and reconciliation. Through a shared experience of leaving behind their childhood homes, this is a story of a first-generation-immigrant father and a second-generation daughter slowly swinging into sync.