Soldier Ivan Denisovich Shukhov was taken prisoner by the Germans, and after leaving it, he ended up in his homeland as a prisoner and he began to build a giant space industry plant. In conditions of hunger, humiliation and fear, he managed to maintain honesty and openness to the world, but will he be able to go free and meet with his daughters?
In this powerful documentary, Mama Yang, an 84-year-old woman living in New York, finds herself in correspondence with 45 high security prison inmates she views as her own children. Most are Chinese American immigrants, and see in Mama Yang a mother figure they never knew before they stepped through prison walls.
For Mama Yang though, the story is about more than Christian charity. She had already lived a full life in Taiwan when her husband died at age sixty and her son lost their house in a financial blunder. She moved to the US to start anew and lives with a Taiwanese American granddaughter that remains distant. In a film marked by family separations, Mama Yang writes letters – whether to the incarcerated or to her own granddaughter – to heal lifetimes of wounds.