Once My Mother, the multi-award winning documentary feature from director Sophia Turkiewicz, will have its North American premiere on August 9 at the Rhode Island International Film Festival.
Now screening at selected Australian cinemas, it recently won the Audience Award at Krakow Film Festival and the Australian Director’s Guild Award for Best Feature Documentary.
The film has taken more than $65,000 at the box office in the first 5 days of its Australian release.
Once My Mother is deeply personal, telling the extraordinary life story of Sophia’s mother, Helen, and their journey to reconciliation and forgiveness.
When Sophia was seven years old, Helen, a recently arrived Polish immigrant, abandoned her in an Adelaide orphanage. Sophia never forgot this maternal act of betrayal. As Sophia examines her troubled relationship with mother she discovers the miraculous story of Helen's life – an orphaned childhood on the streets of Poland, a wartime escape from a Siberian gulag and an enforced march of thousands of kilometres across a war-torn Eastern Europe to the shores of the Caspian in Persia, before finding a peace of sorts in refugee camps first in Africa and then Australia.
Writer and Director: Sophia Turkiewicz
Producer: Rod Freedman
Associate Producer: Bob Connolly
http://oncemymother.com
https://www.facebook.com/oncemymother
Confirmed Cinemas:
Cremorne Orpheum (Sydney)
Cinema Nova (Melbourne)
Cinema Paraiso (Perth)
Greater Union Manuka (Canberra)
The Regal Cinema (Newcastle)