A Brooklyn Family Tale

Produced and directed by Roger Weisberg and Murray Nossel

This powerful documentary follows two generations of the Santiago family of Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Twenty years ago at about the same time that "Cisco" and "Stingray" Santiago became leaders of the notorious Assassinaters gang, Sister Mary Paul and Sister Geraldine, started a unique social service agency called The Center for Family Life. These unusual nuns had the radical yet simple idea that they could strengthen this troubled community by supporting families like the Santiagos. Slowly, many gang leaders, like Stingray and Cisco Santiago, turned to the Center as an alternative to the streets. Twenty years later, Sister Geraldine is still working with the same Santiago family that terrorized the neighborhood two decades ago.

The film opens with sixteen-year-old Luis and his gang breaking the law on the streets of Sunset Park. In rapid succession, Luis quits his job, drops out of school, gets his girlfriend pregnant, threatens his mother and step father with a knife, and is thrown out of his home. Luis’s fourteen-year-old sister, Elena, soon becomes pregnant, stops attending school and resorts to violence in the home and on the streets. Sister Geraldine intervenes in an effort to resolve the family crisis. We witness painful arguments and moving counseling sessions as this embattled family struggles to remain intact. Sister Geraldine’s selfless energy, in the face of terminal illness in her later years, ultimately enables this troubled family to overcome its differences and become a stronger, more loving family. This moving chronicle of one family coping with violence, teenage pregnancy, and school failure mirrors the struggles of families in embattled urban communities all over the country.

60 min. Video or DVD. Sale $295. Video rental $75.

CINE Gold Eagle, 2001
Cleveland International Film Festival, 2001