Just in time for Mother’s Day comes this absolute heartwarmer from the American journalist turned documentary maker Sian-Pierre Regis, about ageism, pensioner poverty and the gig economy, but mostly about his brilliant, wonderful mother. It begins in Boston, when Liverpool-born Rebecca Danigelis is suddenly fired from her live-in housekeeping manager job at a fancy hotel, where she has worked for decades. The 75-year-old is handed two weeks’ pay and an eviction notice to vacate the apartment at the top of the hotel, where she raised her two sons as a single mother. Regis, a 32-year-old freelance journalist, begins filming.
His early recordings on iPhone capture his mother’s total despair. She has $600 in the bank, having cashed her savings to put him through college. No one is replying to her job applications. She feels invisible – though she’s anything but, with her platinum white hair pinned into a chic updo and immaculate makeup. As her son says, she’s a woman of “grit, sass and determination”. At her lowest point, he asks her to write a bucket list of things she could never do because she was always working. He raises $60,000 on Kickstarter and together they tick off her list.
