Diagonale movie review

The gap that a mother inevitably leaves behind

Maria on her way to Austria(Bild: ©sixpackfilm)

World premiere for "Mâine Mă Duc - Tomorrow I Leave" at the Diagonale film festival in Graz: a young filmmaking duo accompanies a Romanian caregiver to her home village. An intimate analysis of the gap that women like Maria leave behind.

Nine hours, 29 minutes on the GPS. The sun is setting as Maria joins the border traffic jam. As she crosses the border, it rises again. The Romanian spends two days a month in the car between her home country and Austria. There she cares for an elderly woman - like so many of her fellow countrywomen. 

"Mâine Mă Duc - Tomorrow I Leave" is the title of the intimate documentary by Maria Lisa Pichler, who was born in Judenburg, and Lukas Schöffel from Vienna, who accompany the carer. The focus is not on her work, but on the community she leaves behind. Because in Romania, many are gone: fathers, sons, mothers, daughters. They drive trucks across Europe, harvest asparagus and care for the elderly. Children and grandparents are left behind. 

Still from "24 hours" by Harald Friedl(Bild: ©Mischief Films)

Maria is not bitter. She doesn't like to leave, and yet the early 40-year-old is proud to be able to feed her family. Care also means hope. Pichler and Schöffel show the tension between the money that the whole family lives on and the subliminal reproaches that the grandparents and teenagers make of the woman: "Mâine Mă Duc," she says again and again. "Tomorrow I'm leaving." 

An empathetic portrait of a community
What is the alternative? Earning 150 euros in the supermarket? What do you want to be, young people once ask each other. They sit in the grass and think about their future as dentists, psychologists, veterinarians. "Where do you want to work?" - "In Romania." - "What would make you leave?" - "Money."

"Mâine Mă Duc" is a fascinating, empathetic portrait of a community. The documentary doesn't look for anyone to blame, yet it focuses on a system in which there are (too) many abuses. Can still be seen on Sunday at 3 pm in KIZ Royal 2.

This year, the Diagonale is also dedicating other films to the major topic of "care work", such as Harald Friedl's "24 Hours", which tells of the monotony of the care work of a Romanian woman in Bad Vöslau, or "The Good Years" by Reiner Riedler, in which a 53-year-old man moves back into his childhood home to care for his mother who suffers from dementia. On Sunday at 5 pm, the Kultum will host "24 hours and more? Diagonale discussion on 'Care' in documentary film".