Long Gone By, which takes its name from the Kenneth Rexroth poem “Airs and Angels: This Night Only,” wastes no time and drops the viewer into its events straightaway. In the opening scene, our protagonist, Ana, a Nicaraguan immigrant, finds out she’s getting deported in two weeks time — the reason for which is murky — and needs to make arrangements for her daughter Izzy, who’s about to graduate high school at the top of her class. To add to the stakes, Izzy also just got accepted to a good university, but Ana doesn’t have the financial means to assist her. Driven to the edge, Ana turns to crime — specifically bank robbery — to help ensure her daughter gets the future she deserves before she’s deported.

As Ana turns to drastic measures, Izzy is busy just being a teenager. We see her at school as she awardly flirts with boys. We see she’s a good kid; she helps her mom out with her second job cleaning people’s houses and tutors other kids from school. She’s in that early-life stage where the future holds so much promise, and she’s full of excitement for the bright future college will provide, totally unaware of the extent at which her mother is going to ensure this possibility. Her story provides a nice contrast to Ana’s dilemma. Her scenes are lathered thick in romanticism, which are doubly enhanced by Duncan Blickenstaff’s phenomenal score, and represent the freedom and opportunity an American life affords young people; whereas, Ana’s is about the pressures and lengths one has to go in an attempt to keep it.