What is having sisters like? Neither of my parents can answer that question. Nearly every other family member can’t exactly explain either. Except for maybe two uncles on my mom’s side, but I’ve never reached out to them anyway. Not sure if I want to or not, everyone in the family is just so distant from each other. Even my brother won’t acknowledge my FB requests. Maybe if I mailed him some sort of snack or an ugly sweater, he’d finally respond… with an expletively-laced message.
Well, this short simple documentary full of emotion explains the journey of Maria Munro as she learns about how she had an older sister and then goes on to learn more about that sister.
Maria explains how she had two older brothers and an older sister (and another that few knew about who was far away). When they were much younger, the kids were sent to different boarding schools and haven’t really talked much ever since. Years later, during a meditation period, Maria started hearing the message of how she has a sister, and it made her wonder if she had another sister. So she calls her siblings and discovers through her brother Gaston, who never talked about this mysterious other sister, explains it is their Dad’s daughter. But since the dad died and the mom probably doesn’t want to talk about it, according to Gaston, Maria tries to figure out for herself who this sister is by getting in touch with her father’s side of the family. Her cousins Mina and Julian reveal more details about how this long lost sister was always distant without contact information and her name was Cecilia. Cecilia leaves a message later asking Maria questions. The twothen texted for hours as they learned about each other and felt they had a connection all the time. Maria then learns how Cecilia was born and what her father was doing before he met Maria’s mother. He was in a pretty rough spot at first, and Cecilia’s grandparents were unsure of what to think of him. Eventually their father found another partner leaving Cecilia behind but her dad still sent financial help in confidence as long as the siblings knew nothing. But as it turns out, Maria and Cecilia’s father was often busy priortizing his job over his own kids and one particular day, he had a heart attack. But once the truth was out, Maria made it her plan to travel to Venezuela so she could meet Cecilia in person. She also does this to reunite with her mother and take care of her. However, Maria’s mother gets fatally ill preventing Maria from meeting Cecilia, until her mother recovers quickly. So the question is, does Maria finally meet Cecilia? If so, what happens?
It’s short, yes. But it’s so full of emotion. You can feel a flurry of feelings when you watch this, it’s heartwarming, and heartwrenching altogether. Just from every moment, from the picture shows featuring Maria’s family long ago to the more recent photos of reuniting with family members, from the recordings of the phone calls to the stock footage of the locations Maria traveled to. Everything is just so purely assembled, and while the length may not be long, you’ll be feeling feelings about family for a long time after watching this.
