[bright guitar music] PRESENTER: New immigrants face steep challenges coming to the US.

Often, though, it's the children of immigrants who find themselves caught between the traditions of their parents and their new norms in which they live.

Coming up on Our Time.

Josh Sun and Yolande Morrison navigate two very different worlds, living up to their parents' expectations while carving a uniquely American voice of their own.

Then stay tuned afterwards for interviews with the filmmakers.

[bright music] [inspiring music] MAN: Why don't people understand me?

JOSHUA: I'm tired of running so fast.

YOLANDE: I wanna be heard.

MAN: Why are people afraid?

I'm ready for change.

I hear you.

I see you.

WOMAN: My time.

MAN: My time.

Our time is now.

Major funding for this program is provided by: The Russell Grinnell Memorial Trust Steve and Mary Anne Walldorf and Betsy and Warren Dean.

Additional funding is provided by: The Joseph Henry Edmondson Foundation The Brenden Mann Foundation The Loo Family The Moniker Foundation The Buck Foundation The CALM Foundation Half the Sky Giving Circle, in honor of Chris Beyer And Will Stoller-Lee A complete list is available online.

♪ Oh say can you see ♪ ♪ By the dawn's early light ♪ ♪ What so proudly we hail'd ♪ ♪ At the twilight's last gleaming ♪ [crowd applauds] ♪ Whose broad stripes and bright stars ♪ [whistles] When I was young, like before I got to school, when I was really young I felt really joyful, I never felt any pressure, I guess.

I felt really free.

[sentimental music] I think I would smile a lot.

There's so many photos of me smiling.

When I skipped up a grade from kindergarten to first grade, I don't know, something happened.

That child, I guess, just went away.

[children speaking in foreign language] My parents met in China.

They were both professors at the same college.

They got married and they had one child.

My mom wanted a lot of kids so she had a second one, me, and my parents had to leave, because there's a one-child policy law in China so they couldn't stay there.

[speaking in foreign language] [water splashes] [faint voices talking] [woman speaking foreign language] Gymnastic, ice skating, play viola.

Maybe a little bit push.

[sentimental music] I guess as a kid I didn't do a lot of things that I really wanted to do or was interested in.

As soon as I skipped into first grade, I felt a lot of panic all the time.

Like I couldn't even go to the bathroom, like I peed in my pants every day because I just was too scared to ask to go to the bathroom.

I just remember feeling like, like I wasn't good enough or something.

[speaking in foreign language] In school, there's just so much you have to do especially for college, or for your teachers, or your parents.

I get straight A's.

Like I'm mad at myself if I get below like 95 in the class.

I'm valedictorian, like there's so much pressure I feel like, but like I can't stop and it's just so tiring, it's so exhausting.

[children singing in foreign language] So I'd say that older generations are more about this idea of selflessness, of service.

And that's a good thing.

Although definitely my generation is more about self-love.

Is self-love selfish?

I don't think it is.

How could you give someone something you don't have?

[speaking in foreign language] I just, I don't think I was ever taught that I was just loved regardless of who I was.

Like I was told, but I guess I just decided at some point that I wasn't lovable.

[sentimental music] Anytime I make a mistake I just, I hate it.

I feel pressure from every single angle.

I just wanna, like, portray this image of myself that people will like.

I realize that relationship is so important.

Parents and the kids.

We cannot push somebod to be the person just parents want them to be.

My kids must be themself.

Enjoy their life.

You cannot be the person somebody wants you to be.

I have recently just really started to be alone.

I like to be alone and listen to music and dance a lot.

It feels reall freeing to be able to not care what people think about me.

[enlightening music] I think I'm finally going back to a place where I can be that four-year-old again, who didn't care about anything except being free.

[enlightening music] [inspiring guitar music] PRESENTER: The Youth Documentary Academy empowers young filmmakers to identify and craft their own stories through intensive training and mentorship in the arts of documentary film.

[bubbly music] [sentimental music] My grandma, she's just always telling us and reminding us that we're not in Jamaica anymore.

If we do something and it's kinda Jamaican or anything, she still tells us that, even today.

I miss jerk chicken and bread.

I miss, oh my God, I miss jerk chicken so much.

[chuckles] [chuckles] I miss the smell of the beach.

I just miss everything.

Well, almost everything.

[sentimental music] When I was growing up, most of the time I help my mom with the farming 'cause she never have anybody to help her, to take care of us.

You know, at times when we didn't have anything like to eat, we went to the river and we catch crayfish and we [laughs].

Cooking, that's all I do all my life growing up.

Not going to school.

Even when I was living with my mom and even though my mom have six of us I'm the only one like was cooking, going to the bush.

YOLANDE: So just go back a little bit.

So how did it feel like when you grow up without your father?

It was rough.

[laughs] We have to do the man and the woman work as our father had to go to the bush and look, the wood, and the food, and climb the tree to pick bread, fruit and things like those.

So it was hard.

I have to leave your mom when she was three years old.

She left me when I was a baby so she'd go and look a job to take care of us, because my father wasn't there.

YOLANDE: What relationship with your father still like?

Well, I don't have a relationship with my father.

We talk to each other, but we don't have a relationship.

In Jamaica, we didn't have much.

I remember when I was small we didn't have tap water, so we had to go to the gutter to get water.

We had to wake up very early, like four o'clock or three o'clock in the morning just to get some water.

So being like 12 or nine and have to get up early [mumbles] from two o'clock, three o'clock to go catch water, that was rough.

[melancholic music] [lively music] [car honks] [faint voice talking] ♪ Ours forever ♪ ♪ Jamaica ♪ WOMAN: Sing up, sing up.

♪ Land we love ♪ WOMAN: Jamaica.

♪ Jamaica, Jamaica ♪ ♪ Teach us to respect for all.

♪ Jamaica is beautiful, but you get more opportunity in America.

Things in Jamaica is very expensive.

Not downgrading my country, where I am from, because that's my country, but it's more opportunity in America.

I do think that being in the US will make me more successful than being in Jamaica.

Jamaica is a third world country and we don't have a lot of opportunities there.

I wanna be financially independent.

I just, I wanna make it out of this life.

[enlightening music] AIRPLANE CREW: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard Delta Air Lines!

Please make sure your seatbelt is fastened.

[birds chirping] [faint voice talking] [speaking in foreign language] [baby cries] [speaking in foreign language] In my household, there's basically only one male, that's my little [chuckling] brother.

He's gonna be three months tomorrow.

But he's the only male.

My mom's my mom and my dad.

So my mom's like two-in-one.

And then my grandma is kinda my dad too, I don't know.

Everybody is like kind of something, so yeah.

The first of April 1999, I came here to America to work, to cook at Cheyenne Mountain hotel, which I'm at until this day.

My grandma made it out by coming here.

She came here on a hotel program.

That's how she made it out.

She saw an opportunity and she took it.

When I leave your mom and your aunt in Jamaica every night I cover my head underneath the cover and I cry.

[laughs] Because I leave your mom and your aunt.

So every night, every day I cry.

On the same day I become a citizen in 2008, I file a petition for your mother and you and it take eight years for the paperwork to come through.

And I've waited and I've waited, and every time I call immigration because I'm so anxious for you guys to come here [chuckles].

And finally they call and says you guys are ready to come up and I came for you and bring you guys up with me in 2016.

[bright guitar music] When we were leaving the airport in Denver I just kept thinking that it was just so beautiful.

'Cause everything is just more advanced here.

The highways, everything.

It was just beautiful.

And then when I got to the house, I was like, wow.

Ugh, God!

[Yolande's grandma speaking in foreign language] We came here on the 11th of August and I started school on the 15th of August.

So it was like four days after we got here.

[sentimental music] I had a hard time finding everything.

I just had a really, and then you have math hallway, and a science hallway, and then, I mean, I don't know, it was just so rushed.

Everyone was just hurrying to get to class.

I don't know, everything's different.

Everything's way different.

The teachers, yeah.

Yeah.

I hate getting B's; I have to get A's.

Like I got like a 98, and I was like, no, it's not good enough, and I just feel like things that I do have to be perfect.

Like I can't afford to screw up, I really can't afford to screw up, so.

People don't guess that I'm Jamaican.

Because they're like, most of the times like when I say, "Oh, I'm Jamaican," they're like, "Wow, you're Jamaican, "really, where's your accent," and I'm like, "I still have my accent, I just hide it."

And I hate talking English all the time, I really do.

I hate that there are not a lot of Jamaicans here.

I just, I miss my country.

You can make it.

No matter what obstacles come your way, you can make it.

You are very persistent, you don't quit easily, and you work very hard.

YOLANDE: Thanks.

YOLANDE'S MOM: I should do everything in my power to make you achieve what you wanna achieve.

YOLANDE: I'm proud of you.

Thank you.

I'm really proud of you.

You'll make it.

To me, you might not make it to you, but to me you'll make it.

I'm really proud of you, mommy.

[sniffles] [sentimental music] [both speaking in Jamaican] [Yolande laughs] Oh my goodness.

Yes, and then come wash up the plate that you forgot.

YOLANDE: Oh, man.

[Yolande's grandma laughs] Are you like proud of yourself?

Well, yes, I'm proud of myself because I fight my way through.

I never give up.

I'm proud of myself.

I'm proud of you, too.

[laughs] I'm proud of you, too.

I'm proud of you, too.

I find it very fun to live with my mom and my kids.

Very fun.

It's something I wanted, to live with my mom for a very, very long time and I actually finally got that.

[enlightening music] [enlightening music] Making a personal film has definitely allowed me to be more comfortable sort of, because I had to be comfortable to be, to even be able to share.

I just love how people just tell their stories and it's from a script, it's from their heart, so I really love that part.

When I was asking my mom about all her struggles in Jamaica, I mean I didn't know that she would say, "Okay, even though I hated it, "my struggles actually made me a better person."

I thought she'd be like, "I hated it," and, "It was horrible," and, "Thank God I'm out."

So I learned that my mom is tougher than I thought, my whole family is tougher than I thought, and they've been through a lot.

My mom, who is a part of the film, she thinks it's like a really important part of me to tell, and she thinks it's like a really good film and a really good story about my life that she thinks I should share, and so she's been really supportive.

No one in my family has ever done something like this, so I think it shows a lot of people in my family that anything is possible.

It's definitely been a part of like helping me grow and I think that's so great, to just wake up and realize that like you are a different person than you used to be and you're becoming better and you're becoming who you wanna be.

And I think that I'm really grateful that my life is like going in a good direction.

[bright music] [enlightening music] [upbeat music] NARRATOR: While much research has focused on domestic abuse in adult relationships relatively little has addressed intimate partner violence among teens.

Girls and LGBT youth in particular report higher levels of dating violence and bullying.

Should the Me Too movement do more to address harassment of LGBT teens and girls?

Coming up on Our Time, Rebecca St. John and Dee Contreras tell painful and personal stories of violence and bullying in their films, "Rock Bottom" and "Breaking Silence".

And they recount the hard steps they each faced to heal and find healthier relationships.

Then stay tuned afterwards for interviews with the filmmakers.

Major funding for this program is provided by: The Russell Grinnell Memorial Trust Steve and Mary Anne Walldorf and Betsy and Warren Dean.

Additional funding is provided by: The Joseph Henry Edmondson Foundation The Brenden Mann Foundation The Loo Family The Moniker Foundation The Buck Foundation The CALM Foundation Half the Sky Giving Circle, in honor of Chris Beyer And Will Stoller-Lee A complete list is available online.