MAMMO International Cinema

Director Shyam Benegal, whose roots are in documentary filmmaking, has created a sensitive
portrait of Mammo, an Indian woman who must use all her resources to survive after the death
of her Pakistani husband. When her in-laws oust her from her own house, she obtains a visitor’s
visa for Bombay to live with a sister who has a thirteen-year-old orphaned grandson. Finally
feeling she has a lifetime home, Mammo manages to extend her visa for a time. When this is no
longer possible, she bribes an employee to remove her name from the foreigner’s registration
office. But the employee’s actions are discovered, all illegal aliens are rounded up including
Mammo, and within twenty-four hours she is deported by train to Pakistan where she has neither
relatives, friends, nor a place to live.