Head of the Jury Anna Van der Wee on A Working Mom:
‘A working Mom’ tells the story of Marisa
Villozial and her return to Bolivia after 15 years of
grueling work as a cleaning woman in Tel Aviv.
It is one mother heartbreaking story leaving behind her 2
infant children, to work day and night, to send back her
pay in the hope to give her children a better life only to
find out that she may have lost them in the process.
It is also the story of the hundreds of thousands who leave
their family and country behind in the hope to give them a
better life. It is a universal story of poverty in a
globalised world, of alienation both at home and abroad.
The way the filmmakers have chosen to tell this story is
very respectful and therefore so effective. We are a fly on
the wall when Marisa comes home. We follow her, we register
what she sees and how she reacts. And how her family
reacts. We hear what is often not said and throughout those
silences a very moving story develops.
15 years of absence have created hopes and false
expectations on both sides. The contradictions between
Marisa and her family unravel in front of our eyes. They
have become total strangers to each other. They are locked
up in incomprehension and alienation.
When Marisa wonders if it was worth it to have left her
family behind for money, we are smashed in the face with
this most essential of all questions in today’s
world: what is the real value of money.
