By age 17, German-born photographer Joanna Mieth had traveled through Europe dressed as a boy (earning the nickname Hansel). She had also provoked the ire of fascist authorities in her home town. Four years later, in 1930, Mieth followed her lover, and later husband, Otto Hagel to the United States, driving across the country alone to join him in San Francisco. This film reconsiders the career of the often-overlooked Mieth, a photographer whose work differs from that of contemporaries Margaret Bourke-White and Dorothea Lange in that Mieth, a migrant worker herself, expressed her hatred of exploitation and injustice not only in her photographs but also by participating in the struggles of workers and immigrants. Often challenging expectations, her wide-ranging work highlights the tenderness of Texas cowboys and the Americanness of Japanese-American “aliens” interned during WWII. This film traces Mieth’s feisty and uncompromising liberalism through a stint as a staff photographer for Life magazine in the 30s, to the blacklist in the 50s, and to her death in 1998.  MP