Love Is Not an Orange

In the early 1990's, women left Moldova in large numbers to provide for their families. Unable to return home, they found a peculiar way to stay in touch: sending large cardboard boxes filled with gifts and food you could only dream about in those days. In return, their children would send videotapes. This exchange became a ritual among thousands of families. Video cameras and presents allowed these mothers and children to share glimpses of their realities while being apart.

As time passed, it became clear that the mothers' return was an increasingly distant prospect. Through these intimate private archives, Otilia Babara, a Moldovan filmmaker living in Brussels, depicts the fragility of family bonds through the eyes of a generation of mothers and daughters who were forced to live apart in order to survive. A country whose women were unwittingly put in charge of making the transition from communism to capitalism.