“Where do you call home?” was the question faced by nearly 3,000 Spanish children exiled in the Soviet Union during the Spanish Civil War. This film tells the story of Angelita Perez, who lived in Russian boarding schools from ages 4 to 24 until completing her medical studies. It’s a tale of resilience, love, and identity, intertwining past and present. It also explores the bond between a mother and daughter through shared songs and stories.
The title is the legitimate question that acts as the film’s premise and the answer is 73 minutes of the adventurous life of the filmmaker’s mother. Looking at today’s world with wars on our doorstep, dictators emerging at every corner, and an attempted culture of silence promoting individualism, this seems to be the film that saves us. I’m not saying this because the film contains answers, but because its 92-year-old protagonist doesn’t seem to be afraid of anything, not even the future. Separated from her family when she was just 4 years old, Angelita and her sister (along with around 3,000 other Spanish children) head for the USSR at the end of the 1930s because of the Civil War. The narrative is built on the memories of the matriarch, a collection of surviving objects, songs in Russian, and a journey through the lands of Ukraine and Kazakhstan to Siberia and then Moscow. A 20-year journey that culminates in a return to an unfamiliar place, to relatives with whom she has lost ties and to building a new life. If this film is about the mother, it is also about the daughter, a filmmaker and artist, who looks at this life as if it were a map that had to be built from Guernica, the objects are rehabilitated and used, transformed, the photographs come to life through the stories. From the film-maker’s daughter to the protagonist’s mother. A film constructed in puzzle format, almost like a game, in which the pleasure of listening is equal to the pleasure of watching. A film about future time. (Miguel Valverde)
