Approach

“I want to break the stereotypes and the usual approach when it comes to how we tell the story about them”, the filmmaker said by Skype from Manila.

“Along the way I learnt that it’s not about escaping from the world they have, but it’s about making something out of their struggle and finding their own happiness. It gives them a sense of purpose”.

The documentary premiered this month at Asia’s largest film festival, the Busan International Film Festival in South Korea.

There are over 300,000 foreign maids in Hong Kong, mostly from the Philippines and Indonesia, who live with their employers and typically toil 16 to 20 hours a day, six days week. Sunday is their only day off. For Goliava and fellow Filipina helpers, Sundays are filled with catwalk coaching and rehearsals, giving them respite from tough jobs by taking part in the annual contest and the events leading up to it.

The film shows their exhausting daily routines, their relationships with their employers, and the hardships they face.

These range from exploitation and strict employment rules that discourage helpers from reporting abuse, to their treatment, such as being barred from sitting on the sofa or forced to sleep in the kitchen.

One maid competing in the pageant lost her job after she failed to get home one Sunday by her 9:00 pm curfew. “It’s a real-life Cinderella story”, Villarama said. Although Hong Kong’s foreign maids have better protection than their counterparts in other parts of Asia, social exclusion and mistreatment in the city have come under scrutiny since the 2014 case of Erwiana Sulistyaningsih, an Indonesian maid beaten by her employer and burned with boiling water.