2018 Digital Storytelling Contest, Innovative Storytelling, 2nd prize

From Janet with Love

Production

National Film Board of Canada

In From Janet with Love, the daughter of a Filipino pen-pal bride explores her mother’s life as an immigrant care worker and DIY philanthropist.

Janet arrived in Canada when she was 21, newly married to Danny, a factory worker who fell in love with Janet’s pen-pal catalog photo.

Janet works in accounting. Weekends and evenings she cares for frail, affluent seniors, donating much of her paltry earnings to impoverished youth in her former village.

Jennifer, her Canadian daughter, hates seeing Janet treated as another “replaceable, submissive Filipina”. Across this mother-daughter divide, they try to understand one another.

Production team

    Writer/director: Helene Klodawsky 
    Photographer: Rita Leistner 
    Producer: Kat Baulu
    Music: Andrew Whiteman
    Illustrator: Fred Casia
    Story consultant: Jennifer Haydock
    Series producer: Nicholas Klassen
    Project manager: Camille Fillion
    Interface designer: Aubyn Freybe-Smith
    Technical director: Dana Dansereau