FESTIVALS: *Enfances dans le Monde (Paris, France)
* Trinidad & Tobago film festival (Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago) * Kerala International Documentary & Short Film Festival (Kerala, India) * Festival Biarritz Amérique Latine (France) * Filmar en America Latina (Genève, Switzerland) * Havana Film Festival (New York, USA) * FOKAL - Fondation Connaissance et libertés (Haïti)
AWARDS: * Best Documentary - Icaro Film Festival
A MI LADO (BY MY SIDE)
Category |
Addiction, Environment, Health, Human Interest, Human Rights, Social Issues, Women, Youth
Year |
2012
Country |
USA
Running time |
95’ - 55’
Format |
HD
Production |
JCDE Productions
Director |
Jean-Cosme Delaloye
Some mothers put their children first. Some don’t. To survive in the trash of the Chureca, Central America’s largest dump located in Nicaragua, three young women will have to determine whether their mothers are their best allies or unexpected foes.
Dominga has terminal AIDS. For the 25 year-old glue addict, breathing has become a challenge in the Chureca, a 5-mile dump located on the banks of Lake Managua in Nicaragua. As she tries to cope with her looming death, she seeks to reestablish a relationship with her son who was taken from her at birth, while looking after her own ailing mother.
Her struggle is the story of many of the 1500 people living and working in the Chureca, the largest open-air landfill in Central America. Dominga embodies the deep bond felt between mothers and their children in a place plagued by disease, drugs and violence. Eleven year-old Fabiola works in the Chureca and is in danger of following Dominga's path. She is caught in a struggle between loyalty to her mother, and the appeals of a group of evangelical Christians fighting for her to join a youth center far from the dump. It's the promise of a better life that other young women like Maryuri are fighting to achieve; at nineteen, she has ongoing health problems and is at risk of losing the second child she is expecting.
BY MY SIDE follows Dominga, Fabiola and Maryuri as they look for an improbable way out of the Chureca in their quest for a better life.
REVIEWS: (click on title for full article)
L'Hebdo (Suisse)
"A mi-chemin entre le cinéma direct pour ce qu’il montre de la Chureca et le reportage pour les témoignages qu’il propose, A mi lado est un film révoltant, essentiel".
TICKET STUB ENTERTAINMENT : « “By My Side” is a powerful and gripping documentary. Moving and humbling. It was made for the world to see and we wholly encourage it to do so. »
Jean-Cosme has covered many crises around the world, from the civil war in Burundi to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to the earthquake in Haiti. He co-wrote RAZOR WIRE RODEO in 2006, a feature documentary co-produced by Swiss Public Television about the Angola prison rodeo in Louisiana. In the last few years, Jean-Cosme has done in-depth stories in Central America for the Tribune de Genève and for Swiss Public Radio, focusing on critical social issues such as the redemption of gang members in Honduras, the plight of transsexual prostitutes in Tegucigalpa, and illegal immigration from Guatemala into the United States. While doing a series of stories in Nicaragua in early 2011, he discovered the Chureca, the Managua city dump. BY MY SIDE is his second film and his first film as a director. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife Danielle and his children, Léon and Joséphine.
