How To Clean A House In Ten Easy Steps

Source: FromAway Productions

How To Clean A House In Ten Easy Steps

EXCLUSIVE: Alfonso Cuarón and labour leader and Roma collaborator Ai-jen Poo are reuniting as executive producers on How To Clean A House In Ten Easy Steps, a hybrid documentary that will receive its world premiere at the True/False Film Festival (March 5-8).

The feature, in Spanish and English with English subtitles, follows Beatriz Valencia, a Colombian-born domestic worker in the United States, and her daughter Carolina as they collaborate to create a fictional writer character. Moving between truth and fantasy, the film is divided into 10 chapters and explores the women’s intertwined experiences of immigration, labour, and womanhood.

Producers FromAway Productions in association with Crooked Highways, Colombia’s El Parpadeo, and Axolotl Films from Mexico will look to bring on a sales agent at the festival, where the film will receive the True Life Fund, a philanthropic initiative that raises money and awareness for documentary participants.

Carolina González Valencia, who portrays Carolina in the film, makes her feature directorial debut. Brenda Ávila-Hanna, Olga Segura, and González Valencia serve as producers.

Cuarón and Poo are joined on the executive producer roster by Ryan Gall, Juan Mejía Botero, and Amanda Branson Gill, and How To Clean A House In Ten Easy Steps is supported by Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program, Abundant Futures Fund, Unbound Philanthropy, LEF Foundation, and National Domestic Workers Alliance.

Cuarón and Poo, a labour leader, organiser, and leading voice in the women’s movement who serves as president of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and executive director of Caring Across Generations, worked together with Participant Media on the social impact campaign for Roma during the 2018-19 awards season.

“How To Clean A House In Ten Easy Steps is a powerful tribute to the imagination, courage, and skill that domestic workers bring to the families and communities they are a part of,” Poo said.

“Beatriz and Carolina’s story reminds us that domestic work is essential labour, and that storytelling enables a form of freedom, especially in times when our rights and freedoms are under attack. The film honours immigrant women as mothers, workers, artists of survival, and authors of their own stories.”

Topics