for Limor Pinhasov & Yaron Kaftori from Israel
with their film A Working Mom
A story which demonstrates the extremes mothers would go to, in order to save their families – sometimes saving and losing them in the same act.
Story
In 1990, 22-year-old Marisa Villozial, left her 3-year-old son and her infant daughter with her parents in Bolivia, and traveled oversee to look for a job in the West.
She spent fifteen years doing hard menial labor in Israel, sending her pay home, following the growth of her children only through periodic phone calls.
In Feb' 2005, Marisa returned to Bolivia to reunite with her children and family and try to become a real mother. Marisa’s return to Cochabamba was a very emotional and upsetting one. Her children, now 16 and 18, were quiet apathetic not to say hostile toward her. They both insisted on calling her Auntie and not Mother, and refused to listen or spent time with her. The house that was to have been built for her with the money she sent turned out to be only a skeleton of a house. With teary eyes she realized she was misled, and that the money she’d sent to her father for the house had been squandered.
Her story is a real-life family drama that reflects powerful and painful global themes: poverty, preservation of culture, alienation and is placement in the new global economy. It is a individual story, that is the most universal story of our times.
All rights reserved.
Cicero films. 2006.
Directors statement by Limor Pinhasov & Yaron Kaftori
We met Marisa ten years ago.
She cleaned the film production office where we worked daily.
She was always quiet and efficient, always cleaning, always orderly and pleasant. We heard rumors that she had children and that she sent the majority of her income to her family in Bolivia. But we never asked. Perhaps we didn’t want to know. At the beginning of 2005, Marisa told us that she was through with her time in Israel. She longed for her home and for her children. As she explained her story to us, her pain and longing were clear. And we, as filmmakers, saw how Marisa’s personal drama could touch the hearts of so many, and challenge the consciences of those who rely on immigrant labor without wanting to grasp its true price.
We just knew we had to turn her story into a film.
More information: www.cicero-films.com/index_e.html
The winning documentary will be screened at VRT Canvas on Wednesday March 26 at 10.55 PM. (linken met www.canvas.be)
