Vos Que Sos Mi Hermana (Film Review)

Note: This is a documentary film, not a major motion picture.

Vos, Que Sos Mi Hermana ; c2001 ; Spanish ; 62 minutes ; directed by Yolanda Olmos. An examination of women’s lives in contemporary Nicaragua.

Essentially a series of brief biographies, being an examination of the lives of everyday Nicaraguan women as they struggle to change the live they have into the life they wish to have, and to reconcile what was lost with a new future for the next generation of Nicaraguan women. A first-hand account of discrimination, family life, education, politics, sexual identity, motherhood, and machismo.

Those interviewed include Socorro Chavez (Xochilt-Acalt member, a prominent Nicaraguan women’s rights group) and Isabel Barones (a woman awaiting the birth of her 11th child; for various reasons, she had no say in many of the previous 10 pregnancies).

This film is of interest, for many reasons (it is barely 3 year old), but in particular in that it is one of the few films not examining the lives of women from within some pre-determined political or religious framework.