A nine-year-old's crayons become weapons against the American Dream's dark underbelly.
"Immigrant" is the coming of age story of Daanyik, a nine year-old Russian boy, whose family immigrates to the United States in the late nineteen-seventies to pursue the American Dream. Daanyik's childhood of pencil drawings and toy soldier battles in Moscow is interrupted overnight as he is hurled into the harsh reality of adulthood in New York City. Upon losing his father Deema, Daanyik and his mother, Meela, are left poor, alone and helpless in a foreign land. Out of desperation for survival, Meela begins a relationship with Tolik, an abusive man that may have had a hand in Deema's death. Daanyik finds himself trapped in a precarious web of torment brought on by his new stepfather, a lecherous Rabbi and a neighborhood bully. Drawing becomes his only source of comfort and catharsis. As his battles grow fiercer, Daanyik, at the tender age of nine, is left to overcome insurmountable odds to save himself and his mother from complete destruction.
Acting
Child actor carries unbearable weight with zero sentimentality.
Cinematography
Hand-drawn sequences bleed into harsh Brooklyn reality.
Writing
No easy villains, only impossible choices and complicity.
Director
Barry Shurchin
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Director Barry Shurchin based this on his own childhood immigration experience from Soviet Russia, filming in his actual childhood neighborhood.
The 1970s Brighton Beach setting captures the Soviet Jewish refugee wave, where tight-knit communities often protected abusers to preserve collective survival.
US
