Milk and Honey

Institute History

  • 1986 Directors Lab

Description

MILK & HONEY is the story of Jo, a woman who leaves her young son in Jamaica and goes to Canada to work as a foreign domestic.

Jo has a dream—to get her land immigrant papers, so that she can make a better life for her boy and herself. Jo works as a nanny for an upper-middle class family. The long hours, the loneliness, the sexual stereotyping, and an attempted rape by Adam, her night school teacher, make Jo question the value of her dream. But she finds the strength to continue through her faith in God and her friendship with other nannies.

Everything changes when Jo brings her son up for a Christmas visit. They've become strangers. David blames his mother for the long year of separation. Jo realizes if she sends him back to Jamaica, she might lose him forever. So she decides to keep him—illegally.

She buys fake papers for the boy from an Immigration con man. When she tries to register David at school, she meets up again with Adam, who is the school principal. Jo coerces Adam into letting the boy into school.

When David runs into trouble, Adam and Jo are drawn together by their mutual need to hide him from the authorities. Adam takes David into his home and the barriers between Adam and Jo gradually break down.

But just when it seems the three of them are going to make it, Jo's best friend informs the authorities. David is caught, and Jo and Adam are forced to make critical personal choices.

Credits

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