‘Mama’ review: A Polish domestic worker has a difficult return home from Israel

Dir/scr: Or Sinai. Israel/Poland/Italy. 2025. 91mins

The emotional complexities of life as a live-in domestic worker are brought to the fore in Or Sinai’s character-driven debut feature. Rather than take on the subject from an overtly socio-political perspective, Sinai invites us to walk, dance and even stagger several miles in the shoes of Mila (Evgenia Dodina), a middle-aged woman from Poland who is a long-standing helpmate to the well-heeled Yaffa (Cheli Goldenberg) and Gideon (Meir Swisa) on Israel’s coastal plain.

Sinai’s scripting makes the characters’ relationships feel impressively lived in

Despite the generic title, Mama has a distinctive personality, focusing less on the day-to-day aspects of Mila’s job and the attitudes of those around her in favour of exploring the long-term impact on her life and relationships back home. The only Israeli film in the Cannes Official Selection this year, showing as part of the Special Screenings strand, the film’s themes are universal to all migrand workers, and Dodina’s strong central performance could help it attract the attention of arthouse distributors.

When we meet Mila in a moment of joy, as she dances and then has sex with the much younger Duby (Martin Ogbu), it’s not immediately obvious that she doesn’t own the upper middle-class home they are in. At least, not until they realise the time and scramble to tidy up before Yaffa and Gideon return. Mila is well treated and liked by the family but her ‘place’, which is implied rather than stated, is in her quarters downstairs. After Mila injures her wrist, Yaffa decides she should go home to Poland to recuperate. The journey is familiar, but soon takes her into unexpected emotional terrain as she discovers that while she has been building for the future, other things have begun to fall apart.

Sinai’s script economically articulates Mila’s relationship with Yaffa. When her boss, who has given her clothes to go home in, says, “my dress looks good on you,” the proprietary nature of their relationship sings out. Matan Radin’s handheld camera also collaborates with Mila from the start, moving loosely as she dances with Duby, and helping immerse us in her emotional experience by staying in tune with the character’s shifting mood throughout. Sometimes, as with the dance, it mirrors her movements, while at others it adopts her perspective.

In rural Poland, life is very different, although Mila’s husband Antoni (Arkadiusz Jakubik) and young adult daughter Kasia (Katarzyna Lubik) seem overjoyed to have her back. Their elderly house, with its crumbling walls, is in stark contrast to her employers’ home in Israel, while a dream house Mila is having built nearby is still a half-constructed shell. The discovery of unwelcome items in a bedside table is just the start of the secrets Mila uncovers, as Kasia reveals the ideas she has with boyfriend Jurek (Kacper Zalewski) are also not part of her mother’s master plan.

Sinai emphasises the duality of the situation, as Mila’s expectations of how life would be thanks to her work abroad come up against a very different reality back home. The contrasting faces of Mila’s experience are also emphasised through subtle costume and make-up shifts – Mila literally sheds her employer’s dress before putting on the ‘costume’ of her home life. The distinction is no doubt helped by the fact that two craft teams were at work in the different countries.

Dodina reteams with Sinai after appearing in her 2016 Cannes Cinefondation-winning short Anna. Perhaps best known to international audiences as Villanelle’s mother in Killing Eve, the Belarus-born Israeli star carefully calibrates her performance. It’s not merely that she conveys Mila’s joy and sadness, but how emotionally torn her character feels.

If some of the plot beats are on the predictable side, as Mila discovers not everything can be solved with money, Sinai’s scripting makes the characters’ relationships feel impressively lived-in. There’s an ‘old love’ quality to Mila’s dialogue with Antoni, as they use established shorthand, so that their arguments feel smouldering and dangerous rather than simply combusting into rage. Hurt may be flowing between them, but so is understanding. Sinai remains non-judgemental, showing how bad choices do not necessarily stem from bad intent. After a lifetime of planning for the future, the question becomes whether Mila can finally home in on her own desires in the present.