Mama

In Mama, a quietly devastating portrait of maternal labour and economic sacrifice, the familiar migrant narrative is subtly upended. Instead of a father leaving home to make money abroad, it is Mila (Evgenia Dodina) — a Polish housekeeper employed in Israel — who sends wages back to her family, only to find her presence slowly erased in the process. The film tracks her through days of domestic work, a romance with a much younger gardener, and glitchy video calls with her daughter, Kasia (Kasia Katarzyna Lubik), who is slipping from her emotional reach.

Director Or Sinai resists melodrama, leaning instead on a sharply contained screenplay and a precise eye for domestic detail. An offhand gift of a dress, a shattered arm foreshadowed by a throwaway comment, a pair of earrings worn in silent confrontation — these are the film’s emotional crescendos. When Mila learns of her husband’s affair, it is not fury but weariness that overtakes her; the betrayal lands with a hollow finality, mirrored in her realization that her role within the family has been reduced to that of a provider.

Dodina’s performance is remarkable in its nuance, revealing layer upon layer of pride, pain, and quiet calculation. Mama is a film of small cruelties and unspoken reckonings, anchored by a filmmaker who understands that the deepest fractures in a family often unfold in silence.

ROBYN CITIZEN

Content advisory: nudity, sexual content, coarse language