Familia

Alberto Herskovits, Mikael Wiström
Sweden 2010 | 82 Min. | DigiBeta, OmeU

Do you love me?” Daniel asks his wife Nati, who is busy pack­ing her suit­cas­es. They have lived togeth­er for 34 years. Soon they will be sep­a­rat­ed by a seem­ing­ly end­less ocean. Nati is leav­ing Peru to go to Spain to earn money for her family. Although Daniel goes to Lima every day to make a living with his moto­taxi, this is not enough to send their little boy to school. FAMILIA is the third and last part of Mikael Wiström’s doc­u­men­tary film project devot­ed to the Bar­ri­en­tos family from Lima, Peru’s cap­i­tal. Wiström met Daniel Bar­ri­en­tos in 1974. At the time, Daniel was work­ing with his wife in a rub­bish dump in the slums, col­lect­ing what­ev­er could be recy­cled. In FAMILIA, Wiström focus­es on Nati, who is strug­gling to get her family ahead as a cham­ber­maid in a hotel in Spain, thou­sands of kilo­me­tres away from her hus­band, daugh­ter and son. With inti­ma­cy and empa­thy, FAMILIA tells a pri­vate family story full of emo­tions, dif­fi­cul­ties and strug­gles that is also a global story about migration.