In the world of movies, every year follows a similar pattern. Halfway through the calendar, those critics inclined to pessimism start ringing the warning bell over a lack of quality film. Outlandish fear over the death of cinema persists through the splashy summer season, but as Oscar season winds down the same conclusion is nearly always reached: a great year for film. Now, 2020 has broken just about every mold we understand, up to and including the way we perceive time. One thing this pandemic decimated year hasn’t changed? It has still been a great year for film.

The mythos of the American Dream has been a staple of US cinema as long as the medium has existed. Our uniquely American egos have produced countless tales of hardscrabble folks finding success in the land of opportunity through sheer force of will.

Now, the protagonists of those films have more often than not been white. As the diversity of film has increased in recent years, immigrants of color have been able to tear down the jingoistic veneer with their own experiences of being failed by the US system. Lee Isaac-Chung, himself the child of immigrants, documents a third angle of the American Dream: the work.

For years now, cynics in the world of film have been crying the downfall of movie theaters. To them, each new advancement in home video drives another nail into the theatrical coffin. In recent years these fears have only accelerated with companies like Netflix and Amazon chipping away at traditional industry norms. All that in mind, it should come as no surprise that Warner Media’s decision to completely blow up exclusive theatrical windows for 2021 landed heavily among those in the world of film.