Stories That Must Be Told
Hard on the Outside — a fiction short film about Eastern European immigrants living in Los Angeles.
The title refers to an old expression "with people, there are peaches and there are coconuts".
Eastern Europeans tend to be coconuts — hard on the outside, but soft on the inside.
People from the Western world tend to be peaches — soft on the outside, but with a hard center.
Our characters Anya, Mila, Aleks, and Maksym are Russian and Ukrainian immigrants settling into their new lives. We experience their everyday struggles to acclimate to life in the West while we learn with them that "a smile goes a long way" in America.
