Together Apart:
A film by Maren Wickwire

Together Apart is an intimate family portrait, at the heart of which are two indigenous women from the Philippine highlands. Both leave their children behind to seek work in Europe. Guil Ann, a twenty-five-year-old woman, follows her mother Carren’s footsteps to work as a live-in domestic helper in Cyprus. Having lived apart for most of their lives, mother and daughter are reunited for the first time in years - only to be separated again when Carren gets arrested by the Cypriot immigration police.

This feature film contemplates notions of selfhood, belonging, and care, shifting between the transitory present, and projections onto the future, that can mark the serial migrants' experience.

TEAM

Produced by Manifest Media
Directed and Written by Maren Wickwire
Editing by Iara Rodriguez Vilardebó
Cinematography by Maren Wickwire
Sound Mix and Design by Christos Kyriacoullis
Color by Panicos Petrides
Running time 57 min.

Keywords: labor migration | transnational motherhood | mediascapes | global care chains | Overseas Filipino Workers | Narrative Approach | ethnographic film | Visual Anthropology

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You have only yourself...

"It’s very hard to find a true friend. Sometimes you have only yourself as a friend and you can only depend on yourself, especially when you are abroad. It’s so hard to trust." Guil Ann

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When I come home...

"I don't have land or a house for my family in the Philippines. That's why I hope I can build just a little house when I come home."

 

Awards and Honorable Mentions

  • 2018 David Plath Media Award - Honorable Mention

  • Winner Best Student Film Award - Honorable Mention The Society for Visual Anthropology’s Film & Media Festival 2018

  • Winner Best Student Film Award 27th International Festival of Ethnological Film in Belgrade 2018

PartnerS

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Official Selection and Screenings

  • Eurorama film festival, selection of the best of the European etnographic festivals, Italy 2019

  • W3 - Werkstatt für internationale Kultur und Politik e.V. Hamburg, December 2019

  • University of the Philippines Department of Anthropology, November 2019

  • Official Selection Inncontro, Innsbruck, Austria November 2019

  • Sac State Uinversity, October 2019

  • Moving Geographies: Literatures of Travel and Migration Conference Nicosia.

  • Official Selection Ethnografilm Nicosia, September 2019

  • Yale University, September 2019

  • ONE WITH A MOVIE Camera 7. Marburg Int. Film Festival 2018

  • Impact Hub Istanbul Screening

  • Sacramento State University

  • I/O Forum Series at the Urban Hive Sacramento

  • University Pompeu Fabra - Summerschool Barcelona

  • Official Selection CEBU INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (CEBU.IFF)

  • Official Selection Diritti a Orvieto, Human Rights International Film Festival 2018

  • Official Selection London Migration Film Festival 2018

  • Official Selection Festival de Cine y Derechos Humanos de Madrid 2018

  • University of Stockholm, Guest Lecture in Forum for Transnational Migration Research by Deirdre McKay and Film Screening of Together Apart

  • Official Selection 2019 SPE (Society for Photographic Education) Media Festival

  • Official Selection IOM Global Migration Film Festival 2018, screenings in Cairo, Manilla

  • XIII Ethnographic Films Review "Eyes and Lenses" 2018

  • Vision Du Reel, Media Library 2018

  • Official Selection (in competition) Nominated for Best Foreign Feature Lebanese International Film Festival 2018

  • 35th International Visual Sociology Association Conference Paris 2018

  • Borders, Racisms, and Harms Symposium at the Birkbeck, University of London 2018

  • German Anthropological Association Conference

  • DIWA Filipino Film Showcase Seattle 2018

  • International Migration Conference: EU at the cross-roads of migration: Critical reflections on the ‘refugee-crisis’ 2018

  • The Nordic Summer University (NSU) Symposium Winter 2018 

  • Goethe Institut Nicosia 2018

  • Moviemento Cinema Berlin

  • Official Selection 15th EASA Biennial European Association of Social Anthropologists 2018

  • Official Selection (in competition) for Best International Documentary Aegean Docs Film Festival 2018

  • Official Selection Regard Bleu #12 Festival for ethnographic student film and media 2018

  • Official Selection AEI-Cine Fest 2018 Cyprus

  • Official Selection Arcadian Screenings Tripolis 2018

  • Official Selection Days of Ethnographic Cinema 2018, Moscow

  • Official Selection Collected Voices Film Fest 2018

  • Official Selection Baja California International Film Festival 2018

Review:
The defining success of Maren Wickwire’s film is its intervention in the translation processes of migration that often turn Self to Other. By highlighting the Filipina domestic workers’ own experiences of displacement in Cyprus, “Together Apart” asserts and celebrates its protagonists as significant subjects of history, globalization, and the multicultural reality of contemporary Cyprus. Guil Ann and her mother Carren expose displacement as a challenge, an opportunity, an anxiety, a delight, a loneliness, a longing, and a series of losses. Displacement is a weak internet signal on a rooftop in the Philippines through which to connect on Facetime; it is carefree comradery on a much-needed night out for karaoke in Old Nicosia; it is a box of modest gifts finally reaching its intended recipients notwithstanding miscellaneous travel hurdles across continents. At the core is the perseverance of human intimacy or the profound connection of one Self to another in a state of being apart. 

Dr. Marilena Zackheos
Director of The Cyprus Center for Intercultural Studies,
Assistant Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Nicosia