
Note from the Director
Research and production on this film began in January 2022 but I would also say that this journey for me began in 2017 when I visited Hungary and Romania for the first time. I went with my parents and was able to meet my Hungarian family in Romania. It was then that I started to learn about this story of my Great Grandmother Zsuzsi and her sisters. I wanted to find a way to tell it through film.
As a Bi-Racial, half Afro-Caribeña Dominican-American half Jewish-American woman, I wanted to give myself permission to tell this story, to tell this family history.
As I say in the film, I’m sure my Great Grandmother in her wildest dreams would have never imagined that her Dominican-American great grand daughter would be the one to tell this story.
It has been one of the biggest honors of my life.
This film is dedicated to my Grandmother Adele.
I tell this story to honor my Mother, Grandmother and my Great grandmother. To all of the mothers in my family, the mothers in our stories. I'm so grateful.
About Paloma Valenzuela
Paloma Valenzuela is a Dominican-American, screenwriter, playwright, filmmaker and lecturer originally from the city of Boston. She is the creative director of the production company La Palomita Productions. She is the writer/producer/creator of the comedic web series "The Pineapple Diaries". The show was featured in the Latina Magazine's "5 Web Series Every Latinx Needs to Watch Right Now", The Boston Globe, Boston Magazine, Remezcla and Hip Latina. She is a 2018-2019 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Neighborhood Salon Luminary and a 2019 City of Boston Artist Fellow as well as was chosen for the WBUR Boston’s NPR Artery 25 in 2019. Her work has been an official selection at film festivals such as The New Orleans Film Festival, Roxbury International Film Festival and Miami Short Film Festival, CineFest Latino Boston. She has taught screenwriting and film at Brandeis University, GrubStreet in Boston and the Institute of Contemporary Art and given workshops at Harvard University, Wellesley College, UMASS Boston, UMASS Amherst, Wesleyan University and The New School. In 2021-2022 and 2023-2024 Paloma taught the ICA Teens Fast Forward Film Program at the Institute of Contemporary Art.
