The Hand That Feeds

GALLERY

ABOUT THE FILM

Directors/Producers: Rachel Lears & Robin Blotnick

Genre: Documentary

Program Length: 90 Minutes

Broadcast Date: June 21, 2016 at 8 PM on WORLD (America ReFramed)

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At a popular bakery café, residents of New York’s Upper East Side get bagels and coffee served with a smile 24 hours a day. But behind the scenes, undocumented immigrant workers face sub-legal wages, dangerous machinery, and abusive managers who will fire them for calling in sick. Mild-mannered sandwich maker Mahoma López has never been interested in politics, but in January 2012, he convinces a small group of his co-workers to fight back.

Risking deportation and the loss of their livelihood, the workers team up with a diverse crew of innovative young organizers and take the unusual step of forming their own independent union, launching themselves on a journey that will test the limits of their resolve. In one roller-coaster year, they must overcome a shocking betrayal and a two-month lockout. Lawyers will battle in back rooms, Occupy Wall Street protesters will take over the restaurant, and a picket line will divide the neighborhood. If they can win a contract, it will set a historic precedent for low-wage workers across the country. But whatever happens, Mahoma and his coworkers will never be exploited again.

ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS

Rachel Lears (Producer/Director/Writer)

Rachel’s most recent feature documentary, The Hand That Feeds, won awards and recognition at Full Frame, DOC NYC, AFI Docs, Chicago Latino, and numerous other festivals on the 2014-15 circuit. It was supported by Sundance Documentary Film Program, the Ford Foundation, Latino Public Broadcasting, Chicken & Egg Pictures, New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), Bertha BRITDOC Connect Fund, and the Cinereach Project at Sundance Institute, and was featured at Good Pitch NY, Sundance Creative Producing Lab & Summit, and IFP’s Spotlight on Documentaries. Rachel’s first film Birds of Passage(2010) was supported by Fulbright and the National Film Institute of Uruguay (ICAU), had two community screening tours of Uruguay sponsored by the Ministry of Education and Culture, and was broadcast nationally throughout Latin America. Her ongoing video art collaborations with artist Saya Woolfalk have screened at numerous galleries and museums worldwide since 2008. Rachel was a 2013 Sundance Creative Producing Fellow, is bilingual in Spanish, and holds a PhD in Cultural Anthropology and a graduate certificate in Culture and Media from NYU.

To see some of her prior writing, music and photography projects, click here.

Robin Blotnick (Producer/Director/Writer)

Robin is a 2013 Sundance Creative Producing Fellow. His first film Chocolate Country, about the work, hopes and music of Dominican cacao farmers, received a Grand Jury Prize at the 2007 Seattle International Film Festival and was a winner in LinkTV’s ViewChange competition. His feature documentary debut, Gods and Kings, about masks, magic and media in the Guatemalan highlands, won the Intangible Culture Prize at the RAI International Festival of Ethnographic Films (Scotland, 2013) and was the opening night film at Ethnocineca (Austria, 2014). His latest documentary, The Hand That Feeds, about a bitter struggle for justice at a New York City deli, has picked up awards at several festivals (including Full Frame, DOC NYC and AFI Docs) and press acclaim at its theatrical run this Spring. It will broadcast on PBS later this year. Between directing projects, he has worked professionally as a freelance editor for over a decade, gaining experience in a wide range of genres and formats.