Or Sinai did not have to go far to find the theme of his acclaimed debut film about the secret life of the millions of women who support their families at home by being domestic workers abroad.
He was talking with the “wonderful Ukrainian woman” who looks at her mother, who has Parkinson’s disease, when the keys began to tell her about the lover who had tasks.
“I realized that our vision of migrant women is so wrong,” he told the AFP at the Cannes Film Festival, where “Mama” is shown in the official selection.
“We think of them as poor women who sacrifice themselves to do everything for their families.
“But real, as I investigated, I realized that they developed temporary thesis identities,” collecting some comfort where they can.
When the Ukrainian keys “began working for my parents, they were ashamed for her and tried to behave as if she were there. It was crazy,” Sinai said.
“So I started talking to her and I immediately fell in love with her because she is very funny.
“She is only three years old and has such a dramatic life, which is an absurd contrast with how many people like her are in the shadows of our society” living their own hidden lives.
– Israel Govt ‘doing horrible things’ – –
It is not the first time that Sinai has returned the ideas appealed upside down.
He won the main prize of the Cannes Festival for Short Film with “Anna” in 2016, where a mother of more of La Mancha goes to look for sex in a small town after having an unexpected afternoon to take care of her son.
“Mama” is a housekeeper who returns home to work for a couple rich in Israel to find their best plans for the family that has the bean bank has been set up in their absence.
“In his attempt to give his daughter something significant, he actually lost every year with her and her ability to connect with her children,” said Sinai, 40.
Instead, he finds her passive and less useless husband who has complemented her as her daughter’s confidant.
Sinai’s best plans were thrown into the air by the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, and the director forced the story to be changed to neighbor Poland.
Dodine strain, born in Belarus, who plays the best person best known as Villanelle’s mother in “Killing Eve”, has been gaining brilliant criticism for “carefully calibrated performance.”
Screen magazine said: “It is not simply that he conveys his joy and sadness, but how emotionally torn his character feels.”
The war closer to Casa in Gaza has thrown a shadow on “Mama” and other Israeli films in Cannes.
Hundreds of the main films figures have signed an open letter condemning Israel for committing “genocide” in Gaza and the film industry for their “passivity.”
With the scores dying every day in Israeli strikes in Gaza since the festival began last week, Sinai said it was important to make “a clear separation between the Government and the Israeli people.”
“The government is doing horrible things” to which many people opposed, he told AFP. “I would like the war to end immediately. I will always carry this on my back.”
Between Ukraine and Gaza, “it is really a miracle that we achieve that the film happened at this horrible moment,” Sinai added.
“The film is about wanting people to feel love for other people and that is the only thing I can do, to spread the love of war.”
