Red Rock Film Festival 2009

New American Soldier follows three immigrant soldiers through the ups and downs of training and deployment, as they take steps towards achieving US citizenship. Today there are over 70,000 immigrants serving in the military – five percent of the Armed Forces. Roughly half of them are not yet citizens, but a post-September 11 executive order has made it faster and easier to apply. Seth Donkor won the visa lottery and left his homeland of Ghana two years ago. A soft-spoken young man, he is now living out his Rambo daydreams as a Private in the US Army. Clarissa Calderón and her family emigrated from Peru when she was a girl. She never thought of enlisting until a recruiter told her that the Army would pay for medical school. Victor Toledo Pulido and his family walked across the US-Mexico border when he was seven. The Army offered a way out of the farmlands of California's Central Valley, but Toledo Pulido was killed in Iraq a year and a half after enlistıng. Through the stories of real people on the front lines, New American Soldier gives us a better understanding of the people who are fighting this war, and what it means to be American.