• "Our daily bread", a documentary film made by Șerban Georgescu, entered cinemas in Romania starting on March 15.
documentary directed by Șerban Georgescu, it presents the story of a small artisan bakery from Bucharest, MamaPan. The 70 minutes of the film capture not a simple bakery business, but the struggle of a group of women in vulnerable situations, who refuse the status of social assistance and choose to work in this place.
According to the data provided by Eurostat, in Romania a percentage of 7% of households are single-parent families and, as in most European states, the mother is the one responsible for raising and educating the children, even when she does not have a partner with her. In these conditions, when they also have to have a source of income to be able to support the family, the everyday reality becomes overwhelming.
MamaPan bakery was established in 2015, at the initiative of Irina Sorescu, graduate of journalism and executive president of the foundation Partnership Center for Equality. The foundation has been campaigning for the rights of women in vulnerable situations since its inception. This is how the idea of a social business was born, which would offer concrete support to women in difficult situations: a stable job.
True heroines
Located in Bucharest, in the Vitan district, the MamaPan bakery currently has six employees, five in production and one in distribution, not only single mothers, but also women who could not find work or who, due to family problems, they could not keep their previous jobs.
The owner of the bakery, Irina Sorescu points out that a social business has a different profile from a regular business: "You have to be very flexible with the needs of the employees, with what they can do, with the schedule they have, with the baggage behind them. From that point of view, it's more difficult and it's a little unpredictable."
The movie aims to touch on several aspects, but the central message is that two extremely different worlds are connected through this bakery: the one in which we, the viewers, are and the abrasive reality of the film's heroines. Director Şerban Georgescu states: "Each of these women is a true heroine. These women juggle raising children, waking up at 4am to get to the bakery, the hard work there and at home, and the admirable way they manage to do it all, often alone, proved to me once again that most of the time, the engine of change in such communities hit by social problems is also the woman. Personally, I don't know any man who could do all this for more than a week, but these women do everything they've been doing for years, with their heads held high and without victimization."
Article and photo source: How the bread kneaded by struggling women grew into a documentary film social enterprise ; cinematic.
Article written by Gabriela Dan, Editor of Arta Albă
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