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The documentary "Nurse Unseen" by the award-winning director Michele Josue pays tribute to Filipino health workers who served as frontliners during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As the U.S. marked National Nurses Week, the Filipino-American documentarian Josue and her team brought their latest piece to the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, and to San Francisco's Center for Asian American Media Fest.

"The timing couldn’t be more perfect," she said, "being AAPI Heritage month and also [during] National Nurses Week so it's really cool that we can celebrate both things."

Using a lineup of experts from the academe, showbiz and even the news media, the film digs deep into the history of Filipino nurses in the U.S., and captures their struggles during the health crisis.

The film features Filipino nurses and their families, and honors those who died on the front lines.

Many of their patients attended the West Coast Premiere in Los Angeles, while community leaders, labor organizers, and fellow nurses attended the CAAM Fest screening.

Tiffany Olega's mother, Rosemary, was one of the first Filipino nurses who died from COVID-19.

"Coming to this I didn’t think I was going to cry," she said. "That moment of breaking down and crying for our heroes. I cried again because my family and friends are out there."

For Josue, the film hits close to home. The filmmaker herself lost several loved ones from the pandemic, including a one-year-old niece.

"This film was already so personal to me before we even started filming it," she said. "I come from such a long line of health care workers, nurses and doctors in my family, so in a way it was a love letter [to them]."

Josue was also hospitalized due to COVID-19 after the film's world premiere at the Cleveland International Film Festival where it won in the Global Health Competition.

The team behind Nurse Unseen hopes to bring this film to other festivals to tell more about the story of Filipino nurses.