Spanning two decades, a Black lesbian couple from Haiti and the Bahamas must confront migration, religious silence, medical injustice, and their mothers' legacy in order to build the family they were never meant to have.
20 YEARS OF LONGING is a deeply intimate documentary about queer love under surveillance. My partner Sofia and I are a married Black lesbian couple from Haiti and the Bahamas, respectively. I live with the status of “withholding of removal.” It is a form of legal limbo granted to immigrants who would face persecution or death if deported. It means I can be removed from the U.S. at any time. I am married, yet still not eligible for a green card. This is the precarious backdrop of our family. And yet, for over twenty years, we have built a life rooted in joy, resistance, and love, while navigating a system that is constantly trying to erase us.
At the center of the film is our present-day attempt to become mothers through IVF in a country unraveling under the weight of fascism, racism, white supremacy, and homophobia. The film bears witness to what it means to wade through policies and executive orders that target us: LGBTQ+ families, trans health rights, and queer immigrants alike.
Thematically, 20 YEARS OF LONGING explores belonging, migration, motherhood, faith, and the fight to love out loud. The film asks: What does it mean to become a mother when you have had to mother yourself? Can love survive the weight of surveillance and systemic violence? And what does it look like to choose joy, even when the world demands your disappearance?
20 YEARS OF LONGING is not just a love story. It is a refusal to disappear. It is a resistance story. It is an offering for those navigating the margins. We are Black. Queer. Immigrants. We pray the audience is there when we declare, “We are mothers.” Come with us on the journey.
GLAAD Award winning filmmaker, Sekiya Dorsett, is dedicated to telling the stories of women of color. Her award winning documentary “The Revival: Women and the Word,” is distributed by Women Make Movies. In 2020, her 4-part documentary, Stonewall 50: The Revolution, in partnership with NBC News and NBCOut, won a GLAAD Media Award and the NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalist for Excellence in Digital Journalism. She is one of the cinematographers for In Our Mother’s Gardens on Netflix. Dorsett's work has been featured at the Tribeca Film Festival, Urbanworld Film Festival, the Brooklyn Museum, Frameline Film Fest and Outfest Film Festival to name a few. Her work has been featured on Huff Post, Mic.com, BuzzFeed.com & Essence.com. She is a member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia. Sekiya’s work centers the Black experience.
Firelight Media Documentary Fellowship 2024-2026
Jerome Foundation Non-Fiction Grant
Tribeca Canva Grant
Cucalorus Works in Progress Residency
Producer - Zephrine Royer
Cinematographer - Jerry Henry
Cinematographer - Tiff Armour Tejada
