Credits
Hannah Rosenzweig, Director
Robin Honan, Director
Ayana Baraka, Director of Photography
Melanie McLean Brooks, Director of Photography
Emily Strong, Sound Production
Allyson Felix, Executive Producer
Dawn Huckelbridge, Executive Producer
Directors’ Biographies
Hannah Rosenzweig is an award-winning film director, producer, executive producer, and founder of Intention Media Inc. Hannah produced and directed the critically-acclaimed film, SURGE (2020) that premiered on SHOWTIME and is now streaming on Amazon and Apple TV. Her latest short documentary, 51st STATE (2024) won a jury award at the DOC NYC festival and is now streaming on PBS. She has produced for films on National Geographic TV, The History Channel, and Sundance TV. She was recently awarded a prestigious JustFilms Fellowship from the Ford Foundation for leaders working at the intersection of storytelling, film, and social impact. Hannah holds a master’s degree in public health from Columbia University.
Robin Honan is an Academy Award-nominated filmmaker and a producer on the Oscar-winning documentary FREEHELD. Her HBO film MONDAYS AT RACINE celebrates a Long Island hair salon that offers free services to women undergoing cancer treatment, helping them restore a sense of beauty following the ravages of chemotherapy. In 2021, her Netflix documentary WHAT WOULD SOPHIA LOREN DO? was short-listed for an Oscar nomination. Robin’s most recent feature length film about a revolutionary treatment for leukemia, OF MEDICINE AND MIRACLES, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, and won 12 film festival awards – her most recent short doc WINDING PATH premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and screened at over 40 festivals worldwide. Robin also directs and produces short films for a wide range of philanthropic and corporate partners.
Directors’ Note
As small business owners who have juggled pregnancies, motherhood, and raising families while remaining in the workforce, we came to this story from a place of personal experience. Without access to paid leave or subsidized early childcare, we ourselves barely emerged from the early years of parenting small children with our financial and psychological well being intact. And we learned that we’re not alone. Over the course of making this film, we learned that birthrates are falling in the United States—and research shows that this is a direct result of the lack of support for working families. As parents, it was no wonder to us that many younger people now ask themselves, “is having a family even possible anymore?”
Curious about how families in this country experience the birth of a child or the illness of a close relative, and what supports and nourishes them during these monumental life experiences and transitions, we wanted to follow the journeys of families whose experiences could represent the bigger picture. We met two families, one in Colorado and one in New Jersey, and were eager to document what we found: that having financial support and the time to care makes a profound difference to families with new children or sick relatives. We also learned that the U.S. is one of the only countries in the world that doesn’t have a national paid leave program, and that only 13 states and D.C. have paid leave programs statewide. And yet the paid leave movement is over 100 years old. Activists have been trying to secure it for families for generations, often coming very close. Their work is tied to the workers’ rights movement, the feminist movement, and the civil rights movement. And through our intimate portraits of families navigating big changes, we learned how meaningful these laws are.
We hope this film will encourage others to be curious about paid leave policy, about the role of government, and about the state of families in America. Elizabeth and Habibah’s families and their stories and struggles represent millions more.
In a time of deep division and growing distrust, paid family and medical leave was an issue that reminded us of the humanity we share and what matters most—being there for the people we love.