Filmmaker Profile: All We Carry by Cady Voge
Welcome to the Bushwick Film Festival Q&A series, where we introduce you to the incredible filmmakers behind this year's lineup. Each of these talented storytellers has crafted a unique vision, reflecting diverse perspectives and powerful narratives that resonate deeply with audiences today. In this series, you'll get an inside look at what inspired their work, the challenges they faced, and the creative processes that brought their films to life. Through candid interviews, they share their thoughts on the impact of their films, the themes they explore, and their hopes for how audiences will connect with their stories. Whether you're here for drama, comedy, documentary, or experimental films, these filmmakers are sure to inspire you with their dedication and passion for the craft. We hope you enjoy getting to know the voices behind this year's festival as much as we have enjoyed bringing their films to our screens. Let’s dive into their stories!
About This Film
All We Carry is a love story about a couple that finds community in an unexpected place while they attempt to heal from their past.
Q&A with Director Cady Voge
Cady Voge, director of All We Carry
What inspired you to create this film, and how did the initial idea come to you?
After covering immigration as a reporter, my motivation for making this film came from my desire to show as many moments as possible that you never see on the news. Headlines about a border wall, families separated, masses risking their lives crossing the desert, and children in cages have dominated the American news cycle. Despite the intention, those images are impersonal and dehumanizing. The moments I saw while covering the caravan that were most captivating for me were the quiet or touching moments of human connection that we see throughout act one of our film, such as a child taking cold medicine while riding on the cargo train, or her older sister sitting next to her putting on lipstick, or the massive operation of informal aid workers across Mexico who volunteer to make huge quantities of food for people along their route as they seek safety. There is also so much focus on the border, but for most people, the vast majority of the time spent seeking asylum is after the journey, after detention, after passing the initial credible fear interview—then most people are given a final asylum hearing date that is years away. I wanted to explore what that limbo period is like for people. It’s such a long time and the majority of people after that wait end up being denied asylum. I always knew this story was worth telling and was extremely important, but the other part of the answer to this question has to do with simply enjoying the work, and knowing that this was a story that would never get old because I love spending time with the family in my film. When I was in college, I interned at a documentary production company and my boss at the time told me that if I were ever to make a documentary, I better make sure that I was endlessly fascinated by the topic because it takes such a long time to make a film. I knew that if I got to spend years with this family documenting their story, I would at least enjoy the process, no matter the outcome. And I’m lucky that they haven’t gotten tired of me yet either.
What do you hope audiences will take away from watching your film?
Our audience is anyone who has a history of immigration in their family, which is the vast majority of Americans. I think our film will particularly resonate with young couples (and those who remember being a young couple) finding their way in the world, figuring out how to navigate all that life throws at us. It will resonate with people who have lost a close loved one and know what it’s like to grieve. Something really important to me from the beginning was to show the joy and the sorrow of this story in equal parts, which I think is particularly resonant for people who know grief intimately. When big life events happen after losing someone close, the loss can feel fresh again and feel bitter sweet even if the big event is joyful. We wanted to capture that bitter sweetness in this story about starting over. In the film, we watch this young family have so many new life experiences, big and small, beautiful and challenging. I always tell people that this film is actually sneakily a love story and a story about marriage more than anything else. I think that’s unique for a film that’s generally categorized as an “immigration story.” I want people to be inspired by the resilience of these two incredible people and to also be gentle with themselves and give themselves a break when they might be feeling like they’re struggling in their relationship or marriage; relationships are really hard!
What was your favorite part of making your film? Memories from the process?
My most memorable moment was when I had the honor of filming the moment when Joshua meets his baby sister Shelsea for the first time when Magdiel and Mirna brought her home from the hospital.
What was a big challenge you faced while making this film?
The biggest challenge hands down has been fundraising. It is so hard as a first-time filmmaker. Anyone who has made an independent film before knows that it’s an uphill battle. I’ve had the same Post-It note with me for almost five years now that I’ve carried around to all the many places I’ve lived in that time period that just says, “The story must be told.” I worried early on that there might be moments when I wanted to give up, but honestly that never happened. I guess the Post-It note worked. The moment when I knew I had something was when Magdiel and Mirna were suddenly living in essentially a beachside mansion on The Sound in Seattle. When I went up to Seattle to be a bridesmaid in the wedding that the synagogue was throwing them, I came to understand how dearly this new community truly loved them. We joke that everyone who meets them is obsessed with them. To the point where I almost felt myself being protective of them, and that’s when I realized: wow, they don’t just have an unbelievable one in a million story, they also have a magnetism that no one around them is immune to. So I decided I better figure out how to make a feature film, because this story must be told.
Tell us an anecdote about casting or working with your actors.
About my relationship with the subjects/participants of ALL WE CARRY: It’s a relationship that’s hard for me to put into words because it’s not like any other relationship I have in my life. The shortest description for it is that I love them and they are family to me now. I met Magdiel just moments before we jumped on the infamously dangerous cargo train, nicknamed La Bestia (The Beast), and moments after that is when I filmed what ended up being the opening shot of the film. We spent three days on that train, surviving together, along with hundreds of other migrants and asylum-seekers. I later visited him in detention and shot a long interview with him there; I was the only person who was able to visit him during the months that he was detained and separated from his family. And, to this day, I’ve never seen another interview shot inside a detention center; I think there was some angel working behind the scenes who gave me permission to come in.
I also visited Mirna during that time, filmed with her and Joshua during a time that was just as uncertain for them as their time fleeing; their fate wasn’t in their hands and everything was new and confusing and unknown, not to mention the intense attention on the border and migrants at that time, which is about to ramp up again during this 2024 election cycle. They crossed right at the same time that the family separation scandal was coming to light, and Mirna actually saw a woman being separated from her children while she was in detention. All of that is to say, I became attached to them as individuals and as a family from the very beginning, in part because I lived a tiny portion of the grueling process of crossing Mexico alongside them, and also simply because they are magnetic people with an undeniable charm that draws people to them.
And the access was a slow and steady process from the beginning as well. The longer I stuck around, the closer we all became, the more trust we built. And along the way, I learned how to navigate transitioning from being a journalist to being a filmmaker, which meant a lot more accountability to them as the participants of the film who were willing to share so much of their lives with me and my camera. I’m not saying that journalists don’t also need to be accountable to their sources, but that relationship often only lasts for a conversation or two.
And I knew from the beginning that I didn’t want this film to look like a long piece of news reportage because I had already done that as a reporter, I wanted to capture all the moments that happen in the quiet moments when the TV crews have gone home, and even more, what happens after people cross the border and they face an extremely long wait for an answer on their case. So I really worked on the accountability piece, which meant that I was very transparent with them at every stage, and we had regular conversations about which parts of their story they didn’t want in the film, and I also consulted with them alongside their immigration attorney so that there would be no concerns in that regard as well.
And then after we’d met in the challenging conditions of the migrant caravan, we also went through the pandemic together. When the pandemic started, I was still living in Bogotá, Colombia and as airports across the region began shutting, I had to choose between staying in my home with my life and my work and my friends, and my partner at the time in Bogotá, or uprooting my entire life to relocate to Seattle to finish production. I chose the film. I’d been planning on making regular trips to Seattle that year, but traveling was obviously no longer an option.
I didn’t want to miss the birth of their second child (spoiler alert!), and I knew I couldn’t miss their asylum hearing, so I left my home and didn’t make it back there for an entire year. By then I was so close with them that when it was time for them to make a plan for who would take care of their older child Joshua when it was time to go to the hospital for the birth of their second child, they asked me, because I checked all the boxes: Joshua and I are buds, I speak Spanish, I was already in their Covid pod, and they knew I had nowhere better to be, haha. It was a complicated birth, so they ended up being gone for four days, and since it was before Covid vaccines, Magdiel couldn’t even leave the hospital to come visit with Joshua. That’s how I was able to capture the moment when they came home with baby Shelsea and Joshua met her for the first time, which I think was the biggest honor of my life to date.
What inspired you to pursue a career in filmmaking?
I still identify as both a journalist and a filmmaker, and I try to let the format, length and audience be dictated by what is best for each story. Magdiel and Mirna’s story turned me into a filmmaker; their openness, vulnerability, strength, and charisma are what captured my heart, so I had a strong hunch that that would translate to global audiences as well, and that their story needed to be a feature length film because of how much happened in the years while they were seeking asylum. I also love their story because act one portrays a very typical experience and then their story takes a sharp turn and we see a one-in-a-million story. Journalism and filmmaking are both second careers for me. In college and for five years after college, I helped start and run a global education non-profit focused on cross-cultural and empathy education. When it was time to move on from that role, I realized that the storytelling element of that job was what I always gravitated toward the most. In high school and college I had taken a lot of photography and video classes, so it felt like a natural transition for me. I had already lived in Colombia for a year working for an online publication when I decided to go back to school to get a masters in International Journalism. Then I went back to Colombia and spent another 3.5 years there, until I relocated to Seattle for the film.
What role does technology play in your filmmaking process, and how has it evolved over the years?
Because I was on my own most of the time while shooting, it was a true run-and-gun production, so I never had a dedicated sound person or even a B Camera most of the time, so we decided to give the film a special sound treatment in post. We worked with a really talented sound designer, Maria Alejandra Rojas, who’s based in Mexico. That really helped us enhance certain elements for a stronger sense of place, particularly with the train, the detention center, and scenes that take place near the ocean in Seattle.
If you weren’t a filmmaker, what would you be doing?
Journalism... or running a vintage clothing shop :)
What’s your history with the Bushwick Film Festival?
I've never been -- I'm so excited to attend this year!
Can you talk about the festival experience? How does it feel to have your film selected?
It feels amazing. There's nothing like reaching audiences after working on a labor of love for six years.
What’s the last film you watched?
The Strike (2024 documentary)
What’s the last book you read?
Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here by Jonathan Blitzer
Early bird or night owl?
Night owl
What three things do you always have in your refrigerator?
Oat milk, kimchi, and kombucha
BIOGRAPHY
Cady Voge is an award-winning filmmaker and journalist specializing in character-driven, long-form, and vérité storytelling. All We Carry is Cady’s feature directorial debut. As a filmmaker, she has shot, produced, and directed short films for NBC, The New Humanitarian, and other media outlets across the Americas and her reporting has appeared in outlets such as the BBC, Wired, and Al Jazeera, among others. Cady is currently in pre-production on her next feature documentary, which examines OB/GYN Meg Autry's quest to launch a reproductive health clinic in federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico serving patients in abortion-restricted states from Texas to Florida. Cady met the participants of her debut feature documentary, All We Carry, while covering the migrant caravan in Mexico in 2018, for which her reporting was nominated for an Eppy. Before becoming a full-time storyteller, Cady directed an international peace education nonprofit organization.
Thank you for joining us for this special Q&A with the filmmakers of the Bushwick Film Festival. We hope this conversation has given you insight into the artistry, dedication, and heart that went into bringing their films to life. Each of these creators represents the spirit of independent filmmaking—fearlessly telling stories that reflect the complexities of our world and the personal experiences that shape us. As you continue exploring this year’s lineup, we encourage you to dive deeper into these works and discover the powerful messages, emotions, and perspectives they offer. Whether you're a long-time supporter of indie films or a newcomer to the festival, your engagement and curiosity make all the difference in uplifting these voices. Stay tuned for more filmmaker spotlights, and we look forward to seeing you at this year’s screenings. Let’s continue celebrating the magic of storytelling together!
