Aniya Wingate is a radiant and talented African American dancer in high school in Houston, who was displaced from her home for half a year by Hurricane Harvey. Shoulders Deep translates her experience of displacement through dance, poetry, and performance. Aniya’s fear, despair, and alienation give way to the salvation, comfort, and love of family and village, where she finds the support to transform trauma into artistic expression. The film is about the existential threat to our home in the era of climate chaos and the regenerative power of coming back home after disaster strikes. Love is central to Aniya’s journey of recovery, and her movement becomes the physical expression of that love.