Waiting for Mamu

9 Reviews

"Pushpa Basnet is a funny, passionate and tireless young woman. In Nepal, if a woman goes to prison and she has children, they go with her. Pushpa has made it her life to rescue these shunned children of convicts, giving them education, confidence and hope. I nominated her for the 2012 CNN Hero Award and she won. My friend Tom Morgan made this documentary, traveling to Nepal to show her inspiring work, so you can see I have a personal connection to this story. As a result of the showing of Mamu at festivals and on planes, Pushpa is building an orphanage to house all her adopted children. It’s wonderful to see how love transforms them." – Susan Sarandon, Academy Award Winner and Activist

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Release Date:	Jul 13, 2013
Running Time:	40 minutes
Country:	Nepal
Language:	English

synopsis

Imagine, at five years old, you are sentenced to prison for 13 years. You have no access to your family or friends, to an education, to the outside world or to society. In some places, if a parent is sentenced to prison and they lack a guardian for their child, the child is imprisoned with the parent. Many of these children go to prison at a young age and are released to the world at age 18, with no life skills or support system, knowing nothing of the world but what they experienced in a jail cell. A documentary short film, Waiting for Mamu, will share the story of what it means for a child to grow up in prison and yet find hope in unlikely places. During a prison tour as part of her university studies, Pushpa Basnet encountered a young girl who tugged at her shawl and looked up at her and smiled. Pushpa promised the young girl’s mother she would be back to get her. This film will capture the hope of a child to be free from prison, even if just for the day, to find a childhood, and to find Mamu.