The protagonists of this documentary are Latin American women living in Madrid and working as maids, what allows them to send money to their families, with which they communicate via Skype. Meanwhile, they dream about returning to their native lands.
While the film places their bosses out of frame (or paralyzed, posing for pictures that are not such), we see the Latin American immigrants in Madrid who are raising their kids, cleaning their houses, and taking care of the elderly who can afford it. They are the moving pictures against the (false) photos of their employers. Real life seems to be the one experienced by the maids, while their bosses make other uses of their own time. Of course, that’s not their real life –their life was left suspended in time on the other side of the Atlantic. The camera occasionally focuses on their loving relationship with the girls, which echoes in a pixelated family picture from a cyber café’s computer monitor. Rather than physical distance what makes absence more painful is actually the irretrievable nature of lost time. Does Catholic religion ease that pain, or endorses it? FEJL
D, G: Vanessa Rousselot F: Frodo García Conde E: Ainara Nieves Magan DA: Sofía Morate M: Nicolás Francart P: Gilles Le Mao, Sofía Morate, Nicolás García PE: Gilles Le Mao, Sofía Morate, Nicolás García CP: La Huit, Catorce Comunicación
Playtime Audiovisuales. Natalia Piñuel T +34 915 444 888 E natalia@playtimeaudiovisuales.com W playtimeaudiovisuales.com
She was born in France, and studied the history of the contemporary Arab world at La Sorbonne. She directed the documentary (No) Laughing Matter (2010). Author and director of the series Drawing the Revolution, about some of the main Arab cartoon artists for the Guardian and France 24.