Barry Jenkins made a sci-fi short about gentrification that hits harder than your rent increase.
Upon returning to their countryside cabin one day, Kaya, his wife Helen, and their daughter Naomi are confronted by two suited men: representatives of the San Francisco Remigration Program. The men explain that San Francisco is now occupied entirely by the wealthy class. But stoplights still burn out and trains occasionally jump their rails. Blue-collar labor isn't obsolete, but it's scarce. The city has created a program to "remigrate" long-gone working class families from their inland homes back to the city that once pushed them out. Kaya, Helen, and Naomi return to San Francisco and join a handful of other potential remigrants for a tour of what can be expected in their new lives. But can they learn to trust their old home once again?
Direction
Jenkins builds dread through silence, not spectacle.
Writing
The euphemism 'remigration' says everything.
Director
Barry Jenkins
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Jenkins made this in 2011, before Moonlight, using $15K from a San Francisco film grant—the same city whose housing crisis haunts the story.
The 'remigration' concept eerily predicts real SF programs incentivizing displaced workers to commute back in for service jobs.
US
