♪ TINA MARTIN: Next, on "Local, U.S.A."... Graduating from high school is often a key turning point, where teenagers face their first choices about the rest of their lives.

CHRIS HASTINGS: What happens after you graduate high school?

Do you all go off to college?

Do you go out into the workforce?

Do you go and do military service?

GEORGINA GONZ ÁLEZ: It's one of the most difficult moments in anybody's life.

LUNA: It's like my entire future depends on all these choices that I'm just so not ready to make.

JOHANNA: When I graduate, my DACA will have been expired for two months.

And I don't know what that means for me, and I don't think I will know until the time comes.

DEZ HERN ÁNDEZ: There is opportunities out there that might be outside of what you've always heard.

MARTIN: "Behind the Scenes: Beyond Graduation," next, on "Local, U.S.A." ♪ Funding for this program was provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as part of American Graduate: Getting to Work, a public media initiative to help communities prepare all students for success in school and careers.

Additional support has been provided by the Wyncote Foundation.

CARLOS VALDIVIA: In the Latino narrative, a lot of the coming-of-age stories concentrate in high school, like, getting to high school graduation.

We don't have a lot of narratives that show what comes after that.

MARTIN: In 2018, World Channel and the National Association of Latino Independent Producers teamed up on an initiative designed to bring new voices to public media.

The topic was "Beyond Graduation," a look at the next steps of Latinx teens finishing high school and making their first choices in adult life.

BENJAM ÍN L ÓPEZ: "Beyond Graduation" began with the idea of, "How do we take a campaign "that's meant to really spotlight the crisis "that's systemic here in the U.S., "which is, 'How do we inspire audiences of color?

How do we get them to see the opportunities beyond?'"

NALIP and World Channel wanted to see who was out there that would be able to provide a fresh take and an inspirational perspective on this topic of "Beyond Graduation."

A story that you could relate to, characters that were complex.

We picked five media-makers who are just, just amazing.

They're looking for stories about, "What happens after you leave high school?

"Do you all go off to college?

"Do you go out into the workforce?

"Do you go and do military service?

"What are the challenges in 2018?

"What more should we be helping young people think about within our local communities?"

"Beyond Graduation" is an opportunity for us where we get filmmakers to go out into their communities to find stories or to create stories about what happens after high school.

MARTIN: The result is a series of shorts, premiering on World Channel's broadcast and digital channels.

Three are documentaries, and two are narrative or fiction films.

All present engaging and surprising young people, and the excitement and the anxiety of this unique period in their lives.

LUIS: The pressure that I have on me weighs down on me a lot.

Just realizing that, that life's real and it's not a game anymore.

LUNA: It's like my entire future depends on all these choices that I'm just so not ready to make.

MARTIN: Here's a look behind the scenes at the five World Channel-NALIP short films.

We'll start with the three documentary shorts.

♪ So is this usually where you sit to do your... Hi, I'm Georgina González.

I'm from Tijuana, Mexico.

And I've been a filmmaker for 13 years now.

My film is about a girl's path to discover that she wanted to do theater and film.

We spent five days with Lissette.

We went into her room and she showed us all the posters and all her trophies and all the things that she's done as a creator.

And then we went to her special place where she writes, and saw her writing.

She opened the doors to her home, her parents, her brother, her creative process, her dreams, her passions, her fears.

I watch for the first star each night.

Star light, star bright... (voiceover): I love acting.

Acting is what gives me peace.

It's what makes me, you know...

It's my stress relief.

I know that I want to be either in a film or on a stage, and I just want to feel the audience.

GONZ ÁLEZ: She knew this would be a hard path to follow, and she had doubts.

She at some point even doubted if it was worth going to college to study this.

LISSETTE: When you're interested in the arts, I feel like it's even harder, because a lot more people doubt you.

You know, most people will often ask you, "Are you sure?

"Are your going to find a job?

Is it going to be worth it?"

It makes me feel like, "Well, why I am I doing all this stuff?"

I feel like that's a very scary thing to think about.

GONZ ÁLEZ: It's one of the most difficult moments in anybody's life.

It reminds me a lot of when I started my filmmaking journey.

It's not a straightforward career path, and a lot of people doubt you.

And they make you doubt yourself sometimes.

But it's important to share these stories, so people who are struggling with that at this moment can know they will find their passion at some point.

LISSETTE: I'm actually really excited, because I'm going to be taking two theater classes next semester, and a dance class.

Since I'm going to be taking classes that I'm really looking forward to, I'm actually going to be enjoying school.

I'm actually looking forward to audition for the plays next semester, and I am hoping for the best.

GONZ ÁLEZ: Lissette had doubts, I had doubts, everybody has had doubts, and we had people or experiences that helped us put us on the right path.

So I hope this film can help somebody like that.

♪ My name is Alan Domínguez.

I am from Denver, Colorado.

I've been making narratives and documentaries for about 16 years.

I also teach film production at a high school in Denver, Colorado.

After students finish high school, they're confronted with a lot of decisions that they have to make very quickly.

We overemphasize the finishing high school sometimes, and we forget that there is this, this world out there afterwards.

♪ "Turns in the Road" is a short documentary that follows four of my former students in the first four years after their high school experience ended.

This is going to be the first time where they all kind of get together in a room and just kind of talk about what they've been doing, why they've made the decisions they have made, what's come into play for them.

Guys, do a little catch-up.

What's been going on since graduation?

JOHANNA: When I got out of high school, I, I had no idea what I wanted to do at the time that you graduate.

LUIS: I was, like, so set, "I'm going to do film."

I'm, like, "This is the thing I'm going to do."

And I enrolled, and I realized, I'm, like, "Nope, never mind.

This is not my thing."

What I don't think I was ready for was the culture shock of going to a primarily white institution.

Why isn't there more people that look like me?

To see them be introspective and to see them insightful and self-reflective about their own lives and their decisions has been very rewarding.

But their ability or their inability to contribute to their families really weighs heavy upon all of them.

LUIS: The pressure that I have on me as a student and as a child of two immigrants, I feel like... it's, it kind of weighs down on me a lot.

I think I have to finish what my parents started in a way, because they weren't able to go to school and have all these opportunities.

It's something I can handle, but it's something that just keeps me on my toes.

Now I'm at Community College Denver and working at... working at a warehouse with my dad.

DOMíNGUEZ: I did not understand how difficult a lot of their immigration tales were.

I didn't realize how much it affected all of them.

JOHANNA: When I graduate, my DACA will have been expired for two months.

And I don't know what that means for me, and I don't know think I will know until the time comes.

People ask me, "Well, why don't you just become a citizen?"

And that, like, that boils my blood.

People think that there's a really long line to get your citizenship, when, really, there's no line that I could get behind, because I would have already gotten in line.

But there is no line.

DOMíNGUEZ: What I would like the audience to take away is just that everybody's path in life is really distinct.

And there's no really one set way, and everybody has to find their own their own road.

Sometimes it's, it's expected.

There are certain things that I can see happening, and there are so many other things that I don't see coming.

But when I see kids long after they graduate, I'm reminded as to how fragile those, those years can be.

♪ HERN ÁNDEZ: My name is Dez Hernández.

I'm a producer, filmmaker, storyteller, first-generation American-- most of my family comes from Cuba, so there's a lot of stories that, that I've always wanted to tell.

That's perfect, that looks great.

A lot of students are sort of just rushed into college and don't understand what they're going to study, or even what college they should be going to.

There's a disconnect between what an 18-year-old senior does and what an 18-year-old college freshman is expected to do.

Right after high school, I signed up for whatever college classes me and my friends decided were going to be fun.

And we spent about a year just wasting time and not doing anything valuable.

I sort of didn't have a clear direction in mind, and so I finally realized that and focused myself-- I changed directions.

Whoever's shooting low, try to get the wheels when they stop, too.

My film is exploring the idea that most high school graduates aren't ready for college or for the next step of their life.

So giving them that opportunity, that extra year-- it could be a service year, a gap year-- it highlights the importance of not only graduating high school, but being prepared to take the next steps after high school.

SAM: There are so many kids who I work with on a daily basis who could use another year, who could use a little bit more time, because, quite frankly, the public education system isn't preparing kids to be successful at the next level.

HERN ÁNDEZ: So we're spending some time with this program based in Atlanta, Georgia.

It's called Leap Year.

AMBER: At Leap Year, we take the hard road, because going to college is hard by itself.

Going to college as a first-gen student or coming from a low-income community is even harder, right?

And I think that we do students a disservice when we're not really honest and really clear about that.

HERN ÁNDEZ: They identify students who have really good chances of being successful in college and in life, but are missing a sort of critical component to their education to really make them sort of stand out and be where they need to be.

AMBER: We know that first-gen and low-income students are less prepared for college.

So then why is the narrative seamless enrollment?

Why don't we give them the opportunity to be prepared when they go to college?

HERN ÁNDEZ: They work with the students 20 hours a week developing these skills, whether it's writing research papers, identifying what they want their majors to be in college, and everything that that entails.

High school graduation is a very important step, but it's only one step on the way to success.

And whether that next step is college, or whether it's an internship, or whether it's just figuring out what you want to do professionally, being able to see examples of people who have been in your position and have figured things out might open the eyes of somebody else who's in that situation.

For me, going to college wasn't just this thing.

I needed it, because we didn't have anything.

When we moved to America, my dad had zero dollars.

It wasn't a game for me, and it shouldn't be a game for any of you all.

You think you can do it, you most definitely can.

SAM: To see Jody graduating magna cum laude from Spellman but able to relate that much more with our students is incredible.

An extra year where they have intense, close conversations around the academic preparation, the financial preparation, the social preparation, the servant leadership that's necessary to be successful in this world is absolutely incredible.

I wish I could send every student through a program like that.

HERN ÁNDEZ: I hope anyone who's watching this takes away the idea that there is opportunities out there that might be outside of what you've always heard.

And scene, cut.

Good job, everybody.

♪ MARTIN: And now, two narrative films in the World Channel-NALIP collection, both looking at teenagers finding their way through the complexities of young adult life.

MAN: You here?

Should I buzz you in?

I'm not going to make it.

This economic analysis of the British agrarian revolution is killing me.

MARTIN: First, a note from the executive producers on why they wanted to support both documentary and fiction filmmakers.

It was quite important for us to not only do stories that were nonfiction but also bring on the narrative side, because it will allow us to continue to experiment and evolve alongside with our audience.

This is a natural segue for us to now continue to explore that into those realms.

What would it look like if we mess around a little bit more with A.I.

and some of the new tools that are really becoming available to our content creators, our artists?

HASTINGS: Narrative films, I think, resonate with a really clean mission that I think really sings to what we're trying to get out to audiences.

These small stories is an opportunity for us to educate audiences about personalities and communities that we don't often hear from, because we're using the digital platform to get to people that we wouldn't normally get to.

My hope is that we're educating, we're entertaining, and making this accessible to a wide, wide audience.

♪ CARLA DAUDEN: Ready?

All right, let's roll camera, roll sound.

And action.

(voiceover): My name is Carla.

I am originally from Brazil.

I've been a filmmaker since I came to the U.S. to study film.

Action.

In Brazil, the question was always, "What do you want to do?"

Even when you were not ready to know, and it almost felt like it was not cool not to know.

You know, you had to know.

I loved film, I loved theater.

I always saw it as a, as a hobby.

It was hard to take it seriously, because everybody was, like, "Well, you're not going to make a living out of it.

And settle.

Action background.

And action.

So I always thought I was actually going to go to law school, and then after a series of events, I was, like, "You know what?

"I'm just going to go and try this and see if I like it."

I came here, I tried, I loved it, and I was, like, "Okay, you can actually make a living out of doing what you love."

Cut.

My film is about Luna.

She's a recent high school grad, and she's deciding what to do with her life.

- Ah, Luna.

Have you decided on a major yet?

- (breath trembles) ♪ LUNA: So this is me, a blank slate with a bright future, an open universe of possibilities, the driver of my very own destiny.

(foot hits object, Luna grunts) Oh, (bleep).

DAUDEN: She sees everybody moving forward, whereas she's kind of stuck in this day job, you know, not knowing what to do.

I saw a lot of myself in that.

LUNA: I was watching those TV shows with the lawyers and the doctors' assistants and the firemen, and I just... have no idea what I'm going to do.

- Luna...

This is not a TV show.

- Well, TV shows definitely feel a lot more fun, don't they?

- No, they shouldn't be.

You know, just go ask around, go see real people, what they do.

I'm a junior financial analyst's executive assistant.

For a large equity consulting firm.

Cool.

WOMAN: Just makes me feel peace and, well...

The silence, the breeze.

- I can imagine.

The only downside is that the pay's (bleep) bad.

You know?

(leaf blower roaring) LUNA (shouting): Excuse me?

Sir!

(grunts in frustration) (shouting indistinctly into pillow) Take one step forward, Ruby.

(voiceover): Her character is hopefully a representation of a lot of 18-year-olds.

Let's go back to one.

(voiceover): I think one of the most pleasant things in this project, in terms of the production, was dealing with the actors.

And cut!

(laughing) Very nice.

Let's go back to one, that was great.

(voiceover): Ruby Cruz, the actress, came to audition and blew our minds.

Ruby, can you cheat, you, a little... Slightly angled like this?

(voiceover): It was so great to find her, because this was her first film project.

LUNA: And now, it's like my entire future depends on all these choices that I'm just so not ready to make.

Do you feel like that, too?

- Hmm.

I don't know.

Yeah, I guess.

- Well, it's always been so much easier for you.

You've always known what you wanted.

You can just be my assistant.

- We would kill each other.

- I would never hire you.

- Shut up, yes, you would.

DAUDEN: Her journey is more about finding out that it's okay not to know what you want to do.

LUNA: I wish I knew sooner, but I guess that's part of the process.

We're too young to know, anyways.

All I know is that life will somehow help me find my way.

DAUDEN: Many times, you make decisions based on fear, on pressure, on just, like, what society tells you that you should be doing.

And I think there are not enough stories saying that, you know, it's not going to be just, like, flowers and, and rainbows once you graduate high school.

It's more just about just the idea of moving forward.

That in life you have to keep moving forward, even when you don't know what that means or where you're going.

VALDIVIA: All right.

Who's the best, because we need to get it... (voiceover): I'm Carlos Valdivia.

I'm a filmmaker originally from Los Angeles, but I'm based in New York now.

And action!

(voiceover): I went to the California Academy of Math and Science.

Cut.

(voiceover); My high school was really, really diverse across social, cultural, religious backgrounds.

And then I got to N.Y.U., and it was, like, very white and wealthy.

I was sort of entering, like, uncharted territory in a way that I hadn't seen on screen or in books or read about.

College was so lonely, and I lived alone in a studio apartment in Manhattan.

I remember the blinds, and my room faced a wall, so, like, there was lack of natural light.

I drew a lot from that loneliness and anxiety.

I brought some of that visual, tactile things that I remember to this story.

♪ My film is called, "Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá," which roughly translates to "Neither From Here Nor There."

And it is a short film about a first-generation college student who is preparing for a very prestigious, life-changing internship.

And the week before the interview, he finds out that his financial aid might be cut, so it puts his entire life in jeopardy.

JOS É: This doesn't make any sense.

How does a scholarship suddenly become a loan?

A $10,000 loan?

Who can even afford to go here?

I'm already taking out loans and working full-time just to go here.

Can you guys just give me another grant or something?

WOMAN (on phone): Um, unfortunately, we've allocated all of our financial aid this year.

We encourage all students to seek outside scholarship, employment, and ask family members to pitch in.

- I'm already doing all of that.

WOMAN: I'm sorry we can't provide more grants at the moment.

- So you're saying you can't help me.

WOMAN: I'm sorry, John.

Again, we encourage all students to seek outside... - José.

WOMAN: I'm sorry, what was that?

- My name is José.

- Oh, I'm so sorry about that, Jorge.

Is there anything else I can help with?

VALDIVIA: A lot of these characters are from my world.

The main character, there's a lot of similarities between me and him.

This kid is trying to get all these people who are in his university to sort of understand, and none of them really relate to him.

By any chance, did you get a message from Financial Aid?

No, but my pops usually handles all that.

Why, is everything all right?

- Uh, yeah.

WOMAN: Okay, good.

Because the girl who lived with me last year, she had to drop out last minute, and I had to cover her rent for, like, a month.

- Oh.

Sometimes it's hard for me to watch, because I'm, like, "Oh."

I'm, like...

I'm almost triggering myself by remembering, like, bad moments.

JOS É (in Spanish on phone): MOTHER: JOS É: VALDIVIA: The biggest thing I learned from this process, as a filmmaker, was to keep pushing forward, sort of like my main character.

The nature of filmmaking is unpredictable, and things come up.

You're always growing because of unexpected challenges.

And I think that's what I learned, is, like, stay calm.

As a filmmaker, you have to stay calm, because you're steering the ship.

Let's get this.

WOMAN: That looks pretty real.

- That's filming, let's do it.

And listen to everyone, you know.

When you have a good crew, they all will have different opinions for solutions when you're facing an issue, and then take the best one and then go with it-- be decisive.

Action.

(voiceover): You got to be truthful and put yourself out there in filmmaking.

I think that's... That's the most fun part of filmmaking, is finding a way to alchemize personal stories in a way that's cinematic.

♪ L ÓPEZ: Your success is our success.

(voiceover): What really impressed me was the vision, what everybody brought in, you know?

They actually want to become better storytellers, better artists, and they want to communicate those stories to a wider audience.

It's important to have those voices of color make it in a universal way that makes everybody relate to it.

HASTINGS: What's great about this program is that it is inclusive.

Not only do we want to show stories of inclusion in front of the camera, but we're also doing something different behind the camera.

We're really pushing the boundary on inclusion.

We're letting people in.

And so that's what excites me about this project.

♪ MARTIN: Five very different films, joined by what Carlos Valdivia just called the "alchemy," the magic of finding personal stories with universal impact.

We hope you'll join us watching the "Beyond Graduation" shorts, and more original behind-the-scenes interviews, at worldchannel.org.

The filmmakers are looking forward to welcoming you to their stories.

HERN ÁNDEZ: I'm very excited for my short to premiere on World Channel.

I've worked in production for a long time, but never got to direct too many projects.

So to see something that is my vision sort of from beginning to end on TV is, is amazing, it's awesome.

♪ MARTIN: Funding for this program was provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as part of American Graduate: Getting to Work, a public media initiative to help communities prepare all students for success in school and careers.

Additional support has been provided by the Wyncote Foundation.

♪