“Joy Joy Nails” began in 2015, when its director, Joey Ally, read “Unvarnished,” a Times exposé about working conditions in nail salons. The article describes the struggles of Asian manicurists, many of whom speak little or no English. Often, they are paid less than minimum wage; they live in packed flophouses and put up with abuse, some of it racially charged, from their employers and supervisors. When she was in college, Ally, who is now thirty-two, majored in political science; before she became a filmmaker, she thought she might work in human-rights law. “We’re always reading and talking about human-rights abuses that happen halfway around the world,” she told me recently. By contrast, in a nail salon, “the striking thing is that there’s effectively a sweatshop situation, but the woman is holding your hand and looking you in the eye.” She began to imagine a film.

The result is an eighteen-minute day-in-the-life, by turns eye-opening, enraging, funny, and moving. “Joy Joy Nails” follows a group of manicurists who live in Flushing, Queens, and work in a suburban nail salon. We see the cramped apartment where the girls sleep. At the salon, we’re appalled by the abusive behavior they endure. But we’re also delighted by their hilarity and vitality, which, during work hours, must stay hidden behind a mask of bland good cheer. Among themselves, the girls are snarky and foul-mouthed. They have great clothes and sing along to K-pop; they are distinct individuals, each with her own good and bad qualities. The film is not a sob story. Its immigrant protagonists are the perpetrators as well as the victims of abuse. When they stand up for themselves, they do so imperfectly, with the limited tools available to them. They are improvisers.

Ally had some concerns about making “Joy Joy Nails,” since, in her own words, she’s “a white lady from New York and Connecticut.” “For good reason, we’re having a big conversation about representation and who’s allowed to represent what,” she said. When she decided to proceed with the movie, she did so under the theory that she and her characters shared common ground: “I’m American and they’re also American.” During production, the film’s Asian actors told her about the difficulty that they’ve had finding good English-speaking roles; when we spoke, she asked me, “Could you please print all the names of my fabulous cast?” (In speaking roles, the film stars Kahyun Kim, Yi Liu, Sarah Chang, Catherine Haena Kim, Jongman Kim, Shirley Kwon, Esther Moon, Amber Sealey, Tae Song, Caryn West, and Chris Yejin.) Ally sees the final result as a joint project between herself and the actors, who sometimes improvised lines in languages she doesn’t understand. (She worked with translators and producers who speak Korean and Mandarin.)

To me, the film’s best quality is its breadth. The protagonists are strong—many immigrants, Ally said, are “insanely badass”—but, frequently, they are also powerless. The front of the spa is a cheerful, Day-Glo wonderland; the back, where the girls spend their breaks, is ugly and cramped. Visually, the film alternates between color and darkness; tonally, it braids hope with desperation. At times, it feels like a documentary, but elsewhere, Ally said, she worked to give it the energy of “a dark comedy.” A lesser film would have been simpler. “Joy Joy Nails” reflects the complexity of immigrant life.