Educational Media Reviews Online

Pomm is a caregiver from Baan Kamlangchay, a Thailand care center for Western Alzheimer patients. Due to the demands of her work, she sacrifices caring for her own children in order to make a better living. In Zofingen, Switzerland, Maya is an Alzheimer patient in her fifties who is sent to the Thailand care center, parting ways with her family for better caregiving services. Both Pomm and Maya’s lives intertwine as they not only find compassion in each other’s company, but also recall memories of their families, both the losses and what they try to hold dear.

The documentary’s cinematography captures the intimate lives of Pomm and Maya, addressing the different cultural backgrounds, yet universal familial relationships between Thailand and Switzerland. While the balance of serene music, sounds, and silence compliments the tender moments of self-reflection and relationships between caregivers and the patients, the use of captions and subtitles emphasizes the languages spoken and the distance on how far Pomm travels to provide care for her family in various parts of Thailand.

First person and third person point of view camera angles and zooming in and out on specific people and objects sets the mood and tension in the documentary as Pomm and Maya’s family explain the expectations and complexities of motherhood. Despite the consequences of her children becoming distant towards her and longing for their mother, Pomm’s background information and her perspective on caregiving shows the viewer a sense of her love and resilience towards her patients and her loved ones with the limited time she makes for them. For Maya and her family, the personal footage used to share Maya’s life before developing Alzheimer’s disease conveys the family’s yearning for the past yet the acceptance of letting go to provide the care she needs in the present moment. Additional footage includes Pomm’s caregiving training and her interactions with Maya and Elisabeth, who was another one of Pomm’s patients, to explore and spread awareness of the frustrating issues and fulfilling tasks of taking care of unique patients in today’s modern times, especially when transitioning from home caregiving to a public caregiving center.

This is a highly recommended heartwarming and heartbreaking film for academic institutions to add into the collections and a valuable educational resource for those pursuing global public health and caregiving services with an emphasis on Alzheimer’s disease.

Awards:
Millennium Int'l Doc Fest, Best Belgian Documentary and Audience Award; Ensor Award for Best Documentary

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