Filmmakers: Juliane Dressner, Edwin Martinez
AFS Representative: Juliane Dressner
Runtime: 56 Min
PERSONAL STATEMENT is a feature-length documentary that follows Karoline, Christine and Enoch through their senior year and into college. They work tirelessly as peer college counselors to realize better futures for themselves and their peers. They struggle and they stumble, but refuse to succumb to the barriers that prevent so many low-income students from attending and graduating from college. Karoline, Christine and Enoch spend much of their senior year helping their peers get to college, even though they must overcome obstacles of their own that could easily prevent them from going to college themselves.
About the Filmmakers
Juliane Dressner is a director, producer and cinematographer who makes character based films that often focus on young people who are overcoming challenging circumstances. Her films have shed light on economic and racial justice issues in education and the criminal justice system (one example is THE SCARS OF STOP-AND-FRISK, which was published as an Op-Doc by The New York Times). She won the National Magazine Award for video for her short film, AN EDUCATION, which was published by The New York Times magazine. Her other short films have been published by The New York Times, The Guardian, The Atlantic, New York magazine, and Buzzfeed. PERSONAL STATEMENT is her first feature-length documentary.