SYNOPSIS:

Tony & Janina’s American Wedding is a feature length documentary that gets to the heart of the broken, red tape ridden U.S. immigration system.   After 18 years in America, Tony and Janina Wasilewski’s family is torn apart when Janina is deported back to Poland, taking their 6 year old son Brian with her.  Set on the backdrop of the Chicago political scene, and featuring Illinois Congressman Luis Gutierrez at the heart of the immigration reform movement, this film follows the Wasilewski’s 3-year struggle to be reunited, as their Senator Barack Obama rises to the Presidency.  With a fresh perspective on the immigration conversation, this film tells the untold human rights story of Post-9/11, that every undocumented immigrant in America faces today, with the power to open the conversation for change.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

I met Tony and Janina Wasilewski on the worst day of their lives. Janina had just found out that her stay of deportation had been denied and she was going to have to leave her partner of 15 years within the next 48 hours.  Tony and Janina’s story had taken a hold of my heart and would not let go.  Why were these two people clinging to this country- even though their family was being torn apart?  I wanted to examine their adopted patriotism, that so many immigrants have for this country, that people like me take for granted.

I listened to stories from lifelong friends of Tony and Janina, who had also come to the US during Reagan’s Amnesty years.  As I stood outside their modest suburban Chicago home, in the shadow of every plane roaring in or out of O’Hare, I promised myself that I would stay with the family and continue to make a film that would help bring them back together. That would be the only thing to make it ‘worth it’ for the millions of others whose lives are being torn apart by our uncompassionate immigration system. Now, almost three years later, I have asked Tony numerous times and in different ways why he does not just follow Janina and Brian back to Poland. The answer is complex for Tony. It has to do with honor, and fighting for one’s country and self, and not to be broken or defeated. These are the gifts he desires to give his family, so that his wife and his son will be able to reap the benefits from all his years of building an American Dream from the ground up.

Tony & Janina- St James Church- Chicago 2007 days before Janina's deportation to Poland.

As an American, born into a country that has enticed so many to come, without the proper system in place to accommodate them, it is my duty to help Tony, Janina and Brian recapture the American Dream that belongs to them.  As the immigration reform movement becomes more galvanized after so many failed attempts, I know the Wasilewski’s story is more timely than ever. Quite simply, their story has the power to move the more conservative leaning on this issue. I think this film shows my purest intention of breaking down stereotypes and opening the conversation about the human rights violations that the undocumented suffers inside our borders.

Tony and Brian

Ruth Leitman 2010

Written, Produced & Directed by
Ruth Leitman

Co-Producer
Steve Dixon

Story Consultant
Gordon Quinn

Director of Photography
Ruth Leitman

Tony at Taste of Polonia Chicago, IL September 2010

Camera Poland
Jacek Taszakowski, Magda Mosiewicz

Camera U.S.
Dana Kupper, Miguel Mendez, Enmanuel Morales, Charlie Garcia, Nick Nummerdor, Steven Greenstreet, Arthur Rhodes, Kali Heitholt

Edited by
Ruth Leitman & Leslie Simmer

Editor
Kali Heitholt

Tony with Congressman Luis Gutierrez

Additional Editors
Amy Cargill, Matt Lauterbach, Hannah David

Music Composed by
Steve Dixon

Post Production Sound
Matt Sauro

Color
Jim Morrisette

Online Editor
Nora Gully

Ruth Leitman (Director/Producer) – Leitman has directed 5 feature length documentary films.  She received a Rockefeller Fellowship for Alma (1998), which also received the Documentary Feature Jury Prize winner at the Hamptons International Film Festival, and was selected to screen at the Director’s Guild of America NYC and the Whitney Biennial 2000.  Alma aired on TV Ontario and Channel Four Finland.  Her recent film Lipstick & Dynamite (2005) premiered at the TriBeCa Film Festival and screened at several other festivals, including the Nantucket Film Festival, where it won the Best Documentary Storytelling award.  The film was featured on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” and “Late Night with Conan O’Brien”, and Leitman was a guest on NPR’s “Fresh Air with Terry Gross”.  Lipstick & Dynamite was released theatrically by Koch Lorber Films and is currently airing on SHOWTIME.  She has directed media campaigns for several political candidates including Harry Mitchell D- AZ, helping to defeat longstanding incumbent J.D. Hayworth in 2006.  Leitman teaches documentary filmmaking at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and at Columbia College Chicago.

Our deepest gratitude to the following organizations:

Illinois Coalition for Immigrant & Refugee Rights

Reform Immigration for America
Center for Community Change, Washington, DC
Polish Initiative Chicago

Albany Park Neighborhood Association

America’s Voice

Archdiocese of Chicago

Copernicus Foundation

Las Americas United Methodist Church

Latin American Coalition

MIRA Coalition

Northwest Neighborhood Federation

Polish Museum of America

The Copernicus Foundation, Chicago, IL

The Resurrection Project, Chicago, IL

The film was funded in part by:
The TriBeCa Film Institute-Audience Development Grant, The Fledgling Fund, The Chicago Instructional Technology Foundation, The Illinois Humanities Council and The Illinois Arts Council.