Like millions of Puerto Ricans in the diaspora, I watched Hurricane María unfold from afar while cut off from loved ones; my grandmother died six months after the storm. Those of us outside Puerto Rico had the doubly horrific experience of not being able to reach our families while simultaneously being subjected to a constant media fascination with Puerto Rican suffering. This media narrative was incredibly distorting and painful; we were portrayed as victims when Puerto Ricans had in fact sprung into action, with communities literally saving one another in the face of total abandonment by the federal and local governments. Landfall is full of affirming stories of Puerto Rican autonomy and mutual aid. From an abandoned school turned community living experiment, to the historic popular protests that removed a governor from office in 2019, Landfall is a portrait of Puerto Rican solidarity and agency in the midst of crisis.

Very early on in the development of Landfall, I could sense that Puerto Rico’s situation was so complex, and the stateside information on Puerto Rico so lacking, the film needed to take on a holistic, intersectional scope. I didn’t think I could do this moment justice otherwise. So the film operates like a series of refracting episodes that play off one another, demonstrating the connections between issues we’re conditioned to think of as separate. How does something like climate change rub up against tax breaks for the wealthy? What does government debt have to do with the everyday lives of regular people? How does a hurricane become an economic opportunity for disaster capitalists? My hope is that viewers will begin to connect the dots between these issues in surprising ways, and start to appreciate the global importance of Puerto Rico’s current reality.

Since I began making this film I have been insisting to anyone who will listen that Puerto Ricans are not to be pitied; we are to be learned from. Puerto Ricans have been setting the bar for sophisticated, creative, even ingenious forms of recovery. I want viewers to see how, just as with the COVID-19 pandemic, in Puerto Rico it is the communities who are most immediately affected by disaster who know the most about how to respond in times of crisis. I also hope viewers will see that any just recovery policy must be led by communities rather than politicians or big NGOs. To me, watching Landfall is an emotionally resonant opportunity for solidarity and allyship, and I hope viewers will see a chance to listen, learn, and bear witness.