1/2 Documentary The Secret of Mother Heil wins two prizes
The documentary The Secret of Mother Heil by Omroep Brabant has won the Golden Region Heroes Award of 2022. This is the annual prize for the best journalistic production of all regional public broadcasters. The production was also awarded best documentary of 2022 in the category ‘The Storyteller’.
Regiohelden is the festival for regional journalism. There, prizes are awarded annually for the best journalistic productions of the regional broadcasters. This year the festival was in Vlissingen.
The Secret of Mother Heil is a documentary by Tom van den Oetelaar, Agnes van der Straaten and Bert Geeraets, commissioned by Omroep Brabant. The documentary won two awards. “Great. We are completely devastated,” Van der Straaten responds after the ceremony. “We really feel this is a story that should have been told, and we’re glad we got to do that.”
Jury chairman Carmen Fernald: “It is a poignant story about unmarried women who had to give up their child. This shows an image of the time. As a viewer you feel the impact this recent past still has on the main characters in the film. Their story is told in a beautifully told with integrity.”
“This moving story about a transition house in Breda is fantastically made.”
In addition to the Gouden Regiohelden Award, prizes were awarded in six categories. The secret of Mother Heil also won in the category ‘The Storyteller’, the prize for the best documentary of 2022. The jury: “As a viewer you are taken into it in a beautiful way. The subject and the main characters are well chosen. They follow a few people in a deliberate way and juxtapose different perspectives.”
In the Netherlands, between 15,000 and 25,000 children were given up for adoption in the last century. Usually by young, unmarried women who had become pregnant. They gave up their child through so-called transit houses, often under heavy pressure. Moederheil in Breda was such a transit house. The forced distance left deep marks on the mothers and children. The documentary ‘The Secret of Mother Salvation’ exposes their pain.
The documentary can be seen this Sunday at Omroep Brabant, at 11:05 and at 15:30. You can also watch the documentary view online.
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