Sriram Emani turned 15 years of navigating the U.S. immigration system into a 22-minute short film, and it premiered internationally on Tuesday, Oct. 13, in Toronto.

"Jam Boy," which Emani wrote, directed, produced and starred in, follows an immigrant coder who wraps himself in a plastic poncho in his own kitchen so the smell of spices won't cling to his work clothes before a meeting. The Microsoft employee cast his own mother, Manga Emani, in the role of the protagonist's mother.

The film arrives at a charged moment for immigrant tech workers on the Eastside. On Thursday, Oct. 8, the Trump administration suspended Microsoft and seven other companies from the PERM green card program, which allows employers to sponsor H-1B workers for permanent residency. Vice President JD Vance said Microsoft laid off 6,000 American workers while obtaining 6,300 H-1B visas and almost 3,000 green cards in the past year. Microsoft said 80% of its roughly 6,000 H-1B applications were to extend or change the status of existing employees.

Emani told the Northwest Asian Weekly that for workers who spent years relying on a company like Microsoft to sponsor their path to a green card, the uncertainty now "reaches into the very place they turned to for security."

The film has screened at 15 festivals since its February 2026 release. It won Best Film at a D.C. film festival and Best Writing at the Bridgeport Film Festival, according to the Northwest Asian Weekly. It also received Special Recognition at the Boston International Film Festival, YourStory reported. Tuesday's screening at the International Film Festival of South Asia marked its international debut.

Emani said he has been developing the idea since he first immigrated in 2011. He described the green card process as "a complete black box of uncertainty" where no lawyer "can give you a guarantee of any sort."

The film draws on real stories. Friends turned down promotions to protect their H-1B status, which ties them to specific technical roles. In one scene, the protagonist meets a coworker who has abandoned his birth name and now goes by "Kevin." Emani's character pushes back: "Those who named you are there — your life is not meant to be limited to this desk that you're chained at."

An anonymous Microsoft employee quoted in the Northwest Asian Weekly piece described the daily anxiety of having legal status tied to a job. Even taking a birthday off, the employee said, triggers fears about seeming replaceable.

Emani, who founded the South Asian performing arts platform IndianRaga while at MIT in 2012, said the short is a proof of concept for a feature-length version. The script advanced to round two of the Sundance Feature Development program, and he is revising it with the Rickshaw Film Foundation's writers' room. He hopes to bring "Jam Boy" to Seattle's Social Justice Film Festival in June 2027. After the festival run ends, the film will be available online at jamboyfilm.com.

"It's your food and culture that make your brain," Emani told the Northwest Asian Weekly. "And how is it that you want one but not the other? They come as a package."