In this series, we turn the camera around onto our award-winning and multi-talented filmmakers. In each installment, we introduce one filmmaker, have a chat, and share some of their most compelling projects.

Stephanie Wang-Breal is a director, producer, and all-around passionate storyteller. Back in 2010, Stephanie made a documentary film Wo Ai Ni Mommy (I Love You Mommy), which followed an 8-year-old girl from China adopted by a Long Island family. The film earned Stephanie an Emmy nomination. But, she tells us, “screening after screening, audience members urged me to look more closely at our domestic child welfare and adoption system.”

And so began her second documentary, Tough Love, which would focus on the child welfare system in the U.S., and chronicle the lives of two parents – one in Seattle and one in New York City – as each fights to be reunited with their children.

The film is slated to broadcast on PBS in 2015, but it has already screened at several festivals across the United States. We had a chat with Stephanie about how Tough Love came about, the challenges of working on such a difficult subject, and her creative process.

Where did the idea for Tough Love come from?

I chose to do a film about the US child welfare system based on the Q&A discussions from my last film, Wo Ai Ni Mommy, a film about international Chinese adoption. Screening after screening, audience members urged me to look more closely at our domestic child welfare and adoption system. And after doing a little research, I was shocked to learn that there were over 400,000 kids in foster care in the United States and I immediately wondered why so many Americans were traveling abroad to adopt kids when there were so many kids in America that needed a home and family.

After speaking with many foster parents about their experiences with the system, many asked that I refrain from reaching out to their foster kids’ birth parents. I felt that it would be unfair to document a story without full representation from all sides and once I started to meet birth parents and learn that many were actually fighting to get their kids home, I felt this was the film I should make since no one in the media is focusing on all the poverty-related stresses that bring children and families in the foster care and child welfare systems.

What was the hardest part of working on this project?

There were many, many challenges in getting Tough Love completed. Most challenging perhaps was getting parents to trust me and let me come into their homes and film them during one of the most traumatic period of their lives – especially when they were already under the State’s microscope. I had many parents involved in filming that decided halfway or nearly towards the end of their cases that the pressure was too much. Without Hannah, Philly and Patrick’s participation, Tough Love would not have the power to take audiences into the experiences of parents going through the system.

Hannah, Philly and Patrick are all personas in your film. So what makes someone a compelling character for a documentary?

When I talk to people about becoming characters in my films, I am mostly interested in finding people who surprise me, who share another side or idea of their life and situation that makes me reconsider why I wanted to make this film in the first place. I look for people who can teach me something new.

Stephanie Wang-Breal is the director and producer of the Emmy-nominated documentary, Wo Ai Ni Mommy, which was broadcast on the award-winning PBS series POV in 2010. Her second documentary, Tough Love, which premiered at the Full Frame Documentary Festival and HotDocs Canadian International Film Festival in 2014, is slated for a POV broadcast in 2015.

At DB Productions, Stephanie Wang-Breal has worked on several impacting films for global financial institutions.