Loose Change (2022)

Loose Change, a student feature film by Sebastian Varriano, is an honest, human story about what it means to be a young woman living in poverty in the United States today. In her busy junior year of high school, Gia (Liliana Reigart) finds herself reaching exhaustion as she has to juggle the relentless challenges she's facing; Helping her single mom and little brother, working a minimum wage job, completing school work, and maintaining a relationship with her best friend, Sarah (Nina Romano). But as the pressure builds, Gia finds it harder to ignore the economic divide that looms over her everyday experience, and with tensions rising between the two friends, she has to grapple with challenging the existing dynamics, or living with the isolation of struggling in silence. Loose Change shows the reality of facing life as a low-income student in a predominately upper-middle class school, and the cost of the "better future" that is presented to those facing poverty. The film brings to life the real stories and faces behind the statistics of poverty, beyond the popularized image of the lazy and dependent working class, and into something living and breathing.