ICE CREAM

On her ninth birthday, Camila helps her mother sell hot dogs on the streets of Los Angeles, hoping to get ice cream with her family, but her older brother doesn’t return.

ICE CREAM began with my curiosity about the street hot dog vendors I often saw outside concert venues in Los Angeles and the children beside them. Camila is a nine-year-old girl with a simple wish. She just wants to spend her birthday with her family and have ice cream together. But immigration, labor, and the systems that shape her family’s life can change even those ordinary moments in an instant.

Rather than explaining immigration through political debate or the language of adults, I wanted to see it through the eyes of a child who does not fully understand what is happening around her. As an Asian filmmaker, telling the story of a Latino immigrant family is also a way for me to express solidarity across immigrant communities.