The fate of economic migrants from the ‘second’ Europe, men and especially women who leave their countries in search of a source of income that will ensure not only their survival but also the future of their family and children, and the impact of this emigration on the families left behind and especially on the children, has become a very actual theme in movies in the recent years. I have seen several Romanian and German films that address this theme and now ‘Mama‘ is added to them – one of those debut films (the director is the Israeli Or Sinai in this case) that does not show at all that it is a film made by a presumed beginner. On the contrary, ‘Mama’ – for which Or Sinai also wrote the script – is a complex film, which addresses this issue from several different perspectives. A film with a heroine who makes many mistakes or almost only mistakes, but with whom viewers can hardly help but empathize. A film that gives viewers something to think about, bringing to the screen the human dimension of a social category that is invisible to many of us.
The main heroine has been working for many years in the home of ultra-rich people in Israel. She is more than just a housewife, she has become a confidant and essential help for the owners of the house, even if the social and economic differences are not forgotten at any moment. When she has an accident at work, she is sent on leave to Poland, where she came from, to see her family again – her husband and daughter, for whose support she had left. It is not surprising that many things have changed in her absence. The husband had started another relationship, the daughter had gotten engaged and does not seem to be very interested in her studies, and the project of the sumptuous house built with the money she sent had stalled. Her efforts to propel her family beyond the limitations she had suffered in life and her desire for them – and especially for her daughter – not to repeat her mistakes are thwarted not for economic reasons but because time and different social environments had changed everyone. On the surface, the Polish mother is strong. She has money, so she has economic power. In reality, the film depicts her struggle to keep her place or at least remain significant in the lives of those in her family.
I really liked the way the script describes the dynamics of the relationship between the woman who had lived for a while in another world and her family: delicately, without excessive rhetoric or melodrama, more through silences and regards than through words. Evgenia Dodina, who learned Polish and perfected it to the point of fluently interpreting the role, is excellent as usual and I expected no less from her. But I also liked her partner actors: the beautiful Katarzyna Lubik in the role of the daughter, the expressive Arkadiusz Jakubik in the role of the husband. Or Sinai manages to bring together and direct actors of different backgrounds and formations into a unified and natural ensemble. The social message is present in her script and precisely the lack of emphasis makes it more effective. What remains with the spectators is the portrait of the heroes in an increasingly diverse world and in which, despite the distances, we are still very dependent on each other.