Day Care Workers Are Saving Lives and Risking Their Own. A Striking New Film Highlights 3 of Them.

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The timing couldn’t be better for Through the Night, released days ago as an intimate and urgent portrait of three women crossing paths at a day care center. Directed and produced by Sundance fellow Loira Limbal, the story highlights a mother working overnight at a hospital, another working three jobs to support her family, and a woman who’s been caring for kids for 22 years. As personal and situational as the story is, it’s a call to action for supporting the millions of front-line workers outside the film’s frame. The pacing, arc, and treatment of themes around economic and social struggle, and the mutual recognition and resilience, are a fitting mirror to the tail end of 2020.

The trailer and full film are here. A portion of ticket sales is donated to the Essential Care Fund in support of child care providers nationally.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

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Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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