Anna Eskamani campaign video pays tribute to her inspiration, her mother

Democratic Florida House candidate Anna Eskamani is launching a social-media campaign video telling the story of her mother, an Iranian immigrant who pursued the American dream and laid the foundation for her daughter’s values, before dying young.

The two-minute, 11-second video, “My Mother’s Name Is Nasrin” is produced to be both inspiring and heartbreaking, while telling the story of Eskamani’s parents coming to America, meeting, working hard, and raising a family in Orlando, and how her memory drives her daughter.

The video opens with Eskamani folding clothes. And then there are clips of old family movies and pictures, and a few contemporary shots, as she tells her parents’ story, of how they each immigrated from Iran, met while working in an Orlando doughnut shop, married, had three children, and then, right after they moved into a new home, her mother died.

“I was only 13, but that night, I found my purpose,” Eskamani recalls in the video.

Eskamani faces Republican Stockton Reeves in the Nov. 6 election for House District 47, covering north and central Orange County. They seek to replace Republican state Rep. Mike Miller who is running for Congress, rather than for re-election.

The video is being debuted Wednesday initially only through an organic online push, through multiple platforms, but her campaign plans also to purchase digital promotions.

After Eskamani announces she found her purpose, the video changes to mostly contemporary footage of Eskamani, driving, making speeches, meeting with people, and contemplating her mother, and also of a wide variety of ordinary HD 47 residents in settings ranging from workplaces to a Pulse memorial.

The video’s message transforms into a campaign theme about what Eskamani says her purpose is:

“To carry her passion and resolve and stand up for working families like mine. She is the reason I fight for good jobs, fair wages, and world-class health care, for safe streets, and great schools, to end harassment and assault and assure full access to reproductive care,” Eskamani says. “My mom’s energy and resilience still live in my determination to empower others.”

And then the video goes back to the folding of clothes. The symbolism there again is a tribute to her mother, as Eskamani had explained earlier: when her mother worked at a Kmart store, part of her job was folding and stocking clothing, and her two daughters and son sometimes would come and help. That action now seems to depict her memory emerging with every folded garment.

“Her story, her pursuit of the American dream also continues,” Eskamani says, as video shows her retrieving a picture of her mother from a wallet, “in everyone who sees Central Florida as a place of hope and opportunity, everyone who works hard to give their family the best possible future, and everyone who believes change can happen if you simply refuse to give up.

“The story of Nasrin Vishkaee Eskamani hasn’t ended. But it’s up to us to write the next chapter,” she concludes.