fiscal sponsorship
Our Daughters
TYPE: Documentary Feature
GENRE: Documentary
STATUS: Production
LOGLINE
For the sake of their twin daughters, an Indian adoptive mother and a white birth mother venture into uncharted territory with an open adoption, crossing racial and cultural lines.
SYNOPSIS
A much-anticipated visit by their birth mother unravels questions around adoption and identity for eight-year-old fraternal twins and their immigrant South Asian parents who adopted them as infants. From rural New Mexico to affluent suburban Pennsylvania, OUR DAUGHTERS weaves intimate verité footage with home movies to tell an unprecedented coming-of-age story of two daughters raised in an Indian household navigating identity, past traumas, and the future of their unique American family.
ARTISTIC STATEMENT
Drawn to stories at the intersection of race, religion, immigration, and family, Jeyaram’s documentary OUR DAUGHTERS weaves 10 years of family footage and archives with five years of observational footage, unraveling identity, race, class, and the complex reality of open adoption through an immigrant lens.
KEY CREW
Chithra Jeyaram - Director, Producer
Chithra Jeyaram is a filmmaker based in New York. She directs, produces, and edits documentaries and films about identity, relationships, race, art, and health. Her first exposure to filmmaking began with a failed attempt to fund a film in India. Deeply affected by that experience, she quit a decade-long career as a Physical Therapist and got an MFA in film production from the University of Texas in Austin. Her short MIJO, aired on KLRU TV and played in 50 film festivals globally. She directed FOREIGN PUZZLE, distributed by New Day Films, a member-owned distribution cooperative. Currently, she is making OUR DAUGHTERS, a feature documentary that examines open adoption in America through an immigrant lens. Our Daughters is supported by Brown Girls Doc Mafia Sustainable Artist Grant, Jerome Foundation, Center for Asian American Media, New York State Council for the Arts, Gotham Documentary Lab & Project Market (formerly the Project Forum), Sheffield Meet Market, DOC NYC, and BFI Production Finance Market.
Jonna McKone - Producer
Jonna McKone is a filmmaker, producer, and artist based in Baltimore, MD. She works with documentary, narrative, archives, and abstraction to explore connections between landscapes, the body, and memory. She produced ALL LIGHT, EVERYWHERE (directed by Theo Anthony) which premiered in Competition at Sundance Film Festival in 2021 where it won a U.S. Special Jury Award. Before working in the film she was an award-winning radio producer for places like the WYPR, BCC, NPR, and WNYC. Her work as an artist and documentarian has received support from Robert W. Deutsch Foundation’s Rubys Artist Grant, Skidmore’s Storytellers’ Institute, Baker Artist Awards, the Puffin Foundation, Maryland State Arts Council, the Center for Documentary Studies, and Maryland Institute College of Art. Her work as a producer has received support from Sandbox Films, Cinereach, and Rooftop Films.
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