A busy Nanny School in Indramayu (West Java) is preparing hundreds of women each year for life as domestic workers abroad. Help is on the way? explores the various characters that undertake the required training and development, following them from the village to the school, into Jakarta and eventually working abroad in Taiwan. We also explore the role of the agents, teachers and personnel at the school. It is at times an emotional journey but also funny, enlightening and a little competitive, offering a unique insight into a lifestyle not often seen on screen.
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.