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Every year, thousands of Dominican women immigrate to the United States in hopes of earning a better income. Many of these women find work in the childcare field by becoming nannies for affluent families and the money received from their employment is sent to provide for family members who still live in the Dominican Republic.

Ironically, while these women become a second mother to their employers’ children, they are unsure if their own children are being taken care of. To shed light on the abandonment and economic issues these families face, Latina Magazine featured a new documentary titled, Nana, that explores how Dominican nannies adjust to their new lives in the United States.

In the film, Nana’s director, Tatiana Fernandez Geara, follows several nannies as they work and try to maintain a presence in their own families despite being miles away. By purchasing calling cards or wiring funds to the Dominican Republic, the nannies stay committed to their families’ financial upkeep despite not seeing their children, sometimes in decades, due to immigration policies or even their employer’s contracts. In the trailer below, viewers will also become privy to how grandmothers and other relatives feel about raising the children the nannies left behind, with one grandmother noting she had to raise 12 of her grandchildren under the roof of one tiny house.

Fernandez Geara birthed the idea for Nana while completing her master’s thesis in Photojournalism at the University of Missouri and she and her team will premiere the project at the Festival del Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano in Havana, Cuba, on December 10, 2015.

For more information on Nana, visit Fernandez Geara’s site, Tatiana.com.

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