A Way to Be Together is an independent documentary short film (18 min) completed in June 2025 that welcomes your support to open hearts and minds. Thanks for visiting our page!

Synopsis

In a small New Jersey town divided by language and culture, a Mexican immigrant community steps into the light—showing how visibility and celebration can kindle unity in uncertain times.

Director's Statement

When I began this project three years ago, I could not have imagined the challenges my community—composed of many longtime undocumented immigrants—would face.

For over 25 years, Oaxaqueños—many of them Mixtec people from small Indigenous villages—have made their way to Lambertville, New Jersey. Today, they represent nearly 20% of this small town’s population of 4,200. And yet, for many years, they remained largely unseen.

In 2022, the Lambertville Library hosted the first-ever Oaxaca (Wah-Ha-Kah) Festival—a vibrant celebration of music, food, and culture that brought Hispanic and white communities together in a rare, joyful exchange. When nearly a quarter of your neighbors are from Oaxaca and most residents don’t even know it, the disconnection is stark. But so is the opportunity for transformation.

A Way to Be Together captures how bridges are built—one dance, one tamale, one conversation at a time. What began as a feel-good portrait of cross-cultural celebration soon evolved into a more urgent story. In 2025, the festival was canceled amid rising fear during Trump’s anti-immigrant campaign. The pain in the community is palpable; they were just beginning to come out of the shadows. This story has never felt more vital.

In 2021, Hurricane Ida devastated our town. My work studio flooded; I lost everything. As a native Spanish speaker, I began volunteering—translating at FEMA tents and supporting Spanish-speaking residents at the library, which had become a crisis hub. Sitting beside Oaxacan families who had lost their homes, I found myself inside a parallel universe I had never truly seen. That experience changed me.

Shortly after, the library commissioned me to develop an empowerment program for local Latina women. That work sparked the first Oaxaca Festival. By 2023, the event had doubled in size. More than 100 white volunteers and Oaxacans worked side by side—building scenery, choreographing dances, and making 1,500 tamales. A new kind of presence—and pride—was born. The town began awakening, and I began to film.

Even Senator Cory Booker took notice, nominating the Lambertville Library for the 2024 National Medal for Museum and Library Service. We became finalists, drawing national attention to our underrepresented Oaxacan community.

A Way to Be Together is a meditation on the power of visibility. It asks: What becomes possible when we choose curiosity over judgment, and compassion over comfort? My hope is that this film inspires other communities to share their stories—and find their own way to be together, creating change, against all odds, as an act of resistance.

Gracias,

Trina

Producer & Director Bio

Trina is a Venezuelan-American, award-winning storyteller with a passion for elevating underrepresented voices and crafting bold, culturally rich narratives. Her work lives at the intersection of art, identity, and community.

For over a decade, she brought to life HBO Latino's acclaimed Habla series, producing sixteen powerful installments that wove together hundreds of personal stories from Latinos across the United States, including celebrities and everyday heroes. Habla became a groundbreaking portrait of the Latinx experience: layered, intimate, and unapologetically human.

As a bilingual director and producer established in New York, Trina has created over 600 digital and social media videos for women, collaborating with platforms such as Yahoo, A Plus, and Facebook. Her eight branded series for Procter & Gamble resonated with Latina audiences, while her consulting work has helped global brands convey authenticity and heart.

Now based in Lambertville, New Jersey, Trina continues to blend storytelling with community building. Her upcoming documentary, A Way to Be Together (2025), explores the immigrant experience in a small town, finding its collective voice. There, she has reimagined the local library's role, founded the Latinas in Lambertville initiative, and helped spark the town's annual Oaxaca Festival — a cultural celebration born of grassroots love and shared roots in the United States.

A Fulbright Scholar in ethnomusicology, Trina's journey began in southern Spain, documenting the soul of Flamenco. Her debut film, 'I'm the Tourist,' aired on PBS and HBO Latino, marking the first of many stories she would tell — stories that move, illuminate, and bring people together.