A Working Mom

In 1990 22-year-old Marisa Villozial left her home in Bolivia to seek employment in the West, leaving her two young children in the care of her parents. For 15 years she worked illegally as a cleaner in Israel, getting up at 5am every day and sending every spare penny back home to her family. Finally in 2005 Marisa decided it was time to return to Bolivia and anxiously boarded a plane back home, unsure if she would even recognise her son and daughter who in her absence had grown into teenagers. Marisa’s homecoming was not exactly the happy occasion she might have dreamed of as she found that what she had worked so hard for was little more than an illusion. Her children treated her with contempt and insisted on calling her ‘auntie’ instead of mother. Meanwhile the house that she had sent money to build turned out to be little more than a shell. This personal family drama of how a mother gave up everything for her family, only to lose it in the process reveals a hidden reality of the global economy. (DOK.fest München)