“We Gained Our Independence, But we Lost Our Mothers”: Documenting Post-Communist Female Migration through Home Videos in Otilia Babara’s Love is not an Orange

Constructed as a collection of interlaced home videos arranged into a narrative that explores the development and legacy of post-communist female migration, Otilia Babara’s documentary Love Is Not an Orange represents a veracious and profoundly emotional investigation of gendered transnational practices. The film not only delivers intimate accounts from the lives of several families affected by female migration from Moldova into Western Europe following the country’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 and its subsequent economic crisis, but also gives insight into the unique capability of home videos to mediate transnational family ties. Using a multimodal analysis framework to investigate how archival footage is used to construct a layered narrative of family separation, adaptation and evolving identity, this study highlights the employment of home videos as “microhistorical” devices that offer intimate insights into the social realities of migration, and explores their role as non-monetary reverse social remittances.