Streaming now: ‘After Maria’

As the United States government continues to withhold $18 billion in Congressional aid for Hurricane Maria recovery in Puerto Rico - even while strong earthquakes have rattled the island - it’s a good time to watch “After Maria.”

The documentary follows three women, Glenda, Sheila and Kenia, who were displaced by the hurricane that hammered the island in September 2017. They navigate life as refugees in New York City, some with children in tow (an estimated one in 14 Puerto Rican kids show symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder).

After a period of months, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) decides to stop paying for the families to live in hotel rooms, so they are faced with homelessness in an unfamiliar city.

As they scramble to make other arrangements, the women watch news footage that reveals the colonialist jingoism of our smiling, paper towel tossing President, who calls Hurricane Maria, with telling incoherence, “A success.”

Director Nadia Hallgren briefly buoys the mood with a graceful sequence of the Puerto Rican pride on display in the Bronx, but the overall feeling of the film is bleak.

For the women sobbing as they contemplate life on the street, FEMA offers only one-way tickets back to the island, saying they are meant to provide, “Temporary assistance until people can find more permanent options.”

That permanence appears to be joining an American underclass facing “ongoing survival mode.”