Director's Statement

In June 2022, a news headline caught my attention: "Filipino healthcare worker made NYC train passenger who spat on her ‘see stars.'" The report was brief: a young healthcare worker riding the N train home was assaulted when another passenger spat into their hand and smeared it on her. However, the healthcare worker decided to fight back. The news article revealed very little—that she remained anonymous for safety reasons, and that she came “from a family of boxing legends.” After that… nothing. No follow-ups. No identity. Just silence.

That silence intrigued me. Who was she? What emotions overtook her—shock, rage, fear? What was her life like before this? I started to visualize her in my mind—how she carried herself, the tone of her voice, the cadence of her speech, the languages she spoke, where she might call home. In time, the story of The Injectionist began to emerge.

Many of my family members work in healthcare. Aside from being a filmmaker and actor, I am also a healthcare worker of Filipino descent. The Injectionist is a deeply personal story that hits close to home. During the pandemic, Filipino and Filipino American nurses—who make up just 4% of the U.S. nursing workforce—accounted for nearly 30% of COVID-related nurse deaths (National Nurses United, 2021). At the same time, they faced a disturbing rise in anti-Asian hate. They were saving lives while fearing for their own.

The Injectionist shines a light on what many Filipino healthcare workers faced: trauma, chronic stress, depression, and a society that rarely saw or acknowledged them. The woman on the train became a symbol—of courage, of breaking silence, of saying “enough.”

Through this project, I hope to explore how fear, grief, and isolation can impact the life and mental health of a mild-mannered Registered Nurse working on the front lines. I want to share our community's humanity so you can see our faces and hear our voices, and we can have agency over our own stories of this time, written by us and for us. And know we were here, fighting—on the frontlines and in our own lives.

So help us bring The Injectionist to life! Please consider making a tax-deductible donation below. 

Don Castro