MOTHERLAND

Marcella Tonin, the mother of filmmaker Miriam Pucitta, remains silent about her time as an Italian guest worker in Switzerland from 1954 to 1974. Miriam herself spent the first years of her childhood there but has only fragmentary memories of this period. There are photos showing her with a Swiss family she didn't know, but her mother and other relatives avoid questions about them. Was Miriam a "forbidden child"? Today, together with her own daughter, she sets out to trace the wounds and traumas of her family in Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. In doing so, she uncovers a largely unknown chapter of labor migration and gains a new understanding of her parents' difficult decisions.