Ama Gloria

Six-year-old Cléo has no mother; her nanny Gloria has raised her since birth. One day Gloria receives a call and has to return to Cape Verde, to the two children she did not raise herself. Cléo makes her promise they will meet once more. Gloria agrees and invites her to the island for the summer. There Cléo sees Gloria's own family, her own life, and her children other than herself. Marie Amachoukeli shows the inequality behind the nannying relationship from inside an emotional story: as a child learns to share love, a woman has left her own children to look after somebody else's. The narrative takes no side and offers no easy resolution. The passages belonging to Cléo's inner world are given in hand-painted animation. The film opened Critics' Week at Cannes in 2023. Who it's for: Viewers who like French drama, films told from a child's point of view, and narratives about migration and care work. Who it's not for: It is short but the emotional weight is heavy. The inner lives of the adult characters are also deliberately left incomplete.