Zoila. My Other Mother

(Zoila. Mi otra madre)

Gabriela Pena / Chile / 2021 / 78 min
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  • FIDBA - Int. Documentary Film Festival

    Best Film Award

  • Santiago International Film Festival

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Synopsis

Spanish with English subtitles

Zoila’s home-movie aesthetic paints an intimate portrait of the titular Mapuche nanny whose absence from the frame poses important questions about the maternal relationship between her and the children she raised. Think Roma without the romanticization of the indigenous maid.

Throughout the film, the filmmaker tries to capture the essence of what unites her with her nanny, and also what separates them. Zoila’s figure was for too long like a nebula, and to begin to understand it involved dismantling class, race, and gender conflicts that coexist among them as ghosts.

The diversity of the footage also exposes a battle of narrators wanting to film their history, which questions rigid ideas of parenting and expresses the genesis of a family under reconstruction.

Related Subjects
About the Director
Gabriela Pena is a Chilean-Spanish Audiovisual Communicator who graduated from Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona (Spain). She co-founded Grieta Cine in Chile where she resides. Pena directed her first documentary feature Zoila in 2021 and is currently working on her second documentary feature, Here, the Silence is Heard.
Press

“Highly recommended. The film poignantly interrogates the dynamics between wealthy families and their hired nannies, questioning whether children perceive these caregivers as genuine individuals or merely as commodities.” – Monique Threatt, Indiana University, Herman B Wells Library, Bloomington, IN, EMRO

Notes on the Film

“I discovered that the tapes of my childhood that were intended to record our history as a family omitted the existence of Zoila, a Mapuche woman who worked and slept in the house, with whom I still have an intimate relationship. From this confusion, I started a cinematic search to correct the absence of the previous images and to investigate our relationship in the deepest sense. Zoila was the first person to know that I got my period, but I had never pondered about her maternal role. Her figure was for too long like a nebula, and to begin to understand it involved dismantling great class, race, and gender conflicts that coexist among us as ghosts. Flying over our memory and passing through our images. I tried to capture the essence of what unites us, and also what separates us.”

– Gabriela Pena, director

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