Directed by: Otilia Babara – Moldova, France, Netherlands, Belgium – 2022 – 73 min
 

Synopsis:

During the 1990s women from Moldova began to work abroad to be able to support their families. Little by little, time and distance take the form of packages crossing the border: mothers used to send boxes of food and presents that one could only dream of back then and received video tapes with their children in return. Using solely archival images (the raw footage consisted of over 100 hours of film), the director captures the fragility of family bonds through the eyes of a generation of mothers and daughters constrained to live by themselves, a generation history forced to transition from communism to capitalism. This is a film made by a woman about women, centered around a collective experience she was a part of as well, where men have more of a supportive role. Although the charaters live their lives so transparently and intimately on screen, the viewer’s sense of disconfort is as real it gets: one cannot help feeling somewhat like those mothers, so close, and yet absent, because the main dilemma, - parental love vs. financial security -, is still present among us.