We met Marisa ten years ago. Se used to clean the office of our film studio. She was always quiet and efficient, always busy and discreet. We had heard that she had children, and that she sent most of her earnings to her family back in Bolivia. However, we never asked her about her life. Maybe we didn’t really want to know what her story was. At the beginning of 2005, Maria told us that her stay in our country, Israel, was coming to an end. She missed home and her family and had decided to go back to her country once and for all.
That’s how she started telling us her story, which made the reasons behind her silence at once very clear, and we understood how much pain this tenacious and quiet woman had been concealing. As filmmakers, we realised that Maria’s drama and pain could touch the heart of many people and question the sensitivity of those who deal with immigrant workers without fully understanding the extent of their sacrifice. In that moment, we realised that we had to turn her story into a film. – Limor Pinhasov & Yaron Kaftori