One phone call, one take, one immigrant worker's invisible labor exposed.
Tala is a young filipino domestic worker living with a bourgeois family on the north shore of Montreal. As she runs through her daily chores, dealing with the eccentricities of her employers, an unexpected phone call puts her at great risk of getting fired. Shot in a single over-the-shoulder long take, TALA is a satirical drama inspired by Canada's controversial live-in care-givers program.
Direction
Single 12-minute take traps you in Tala's perspective—no escape, no cut.
Acting
Alice Tran's face does what dialogue cannot: survive.
Director
Pier-Philippe Chevigny
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Inspired by Canada's Live-in Caregiver Program, which tied immigration status to employer sponsorship—effectively indenturing thousands of Filipino women to middle-class Canadian families until 2014 reforms.
The over-the-shoulder shot deliberately obscures Tala's face during employer interactions—we see what they see: labor, not personhood.
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