In 2009, Mabel Valdiviezo (she/they), started work on an autobiographical documentary. Completed 15 years later in 2024, Mabel is now traveling to share the film and connect on a personal level with audiences about her experience returning home to Peru after years estranged from family as an undocumented immigrant in the United States. Mabel, our Fall 2022 grantee for The TRANSFORM Business Grant, recently showed their film at the University of Colorado – Boulder where I got to meet them for the first time. This was special in itself as Mabel and I only connected virtually during their mentorship year with TRANSFORM. I also had not seen the film in its final form as it was still in postproduction in 2022-2023.
Hosted by Professor Gabrielle Cabrera, a cultural anthropologist who teaches a course on borders and migration, the room was filled for the showing of Prodigal Daughter / Hija Pródiga. The film centers around Mabel’s personal immigrant experience, combining family photos, her own art, animation, and intimate cinematography to explore transnational migration, gender equality, and mental health. Mabel combines showings of the film with interactive art workshops to support personal reflection and connection around the film’s themes. The film has received a number of awards since its completion, including Best Documentary at the 2025 Arizona International Film Festival, and Official Selection at multiple festivals, including the 2025 Chicago Latino Film Festiva, 2024 Virginial Film Festival, and 2024 CineFest Latino Boston.
After the screening, Mabel shared more about the film. She’d hoped to include more archival photos of herself and her friends in the film, but said they couldn’t be found. Only a few people had cameras in the late 1980s/early 1990s. For Mabel, it was important to center their experience as subtes (the counterculture punk movement in Peru fighting against the country’s dictatorship) from their perspective. Using what she had or could get from friends still in Peru, she included photos along with graphic novel-style drawings depicting what was happening at the time and their resistance.
Mabel also talked to a question about what happens to people with the passage of time, sharing that in the past she had a greater split of personal identity and that in exploring her identity in many ways, she’s found that identity comes from a sense of belonging. They’ve felt “split” in the last and that in doing work to understand their “self” better that they’ve come closer to what connects identity and belonging. In many ways, deciding to return to Peru and documenting the experience over more than a decade was core to Mabel’s understanding of who she is as a person.
For information on how to bring Prodigal Daughter / Hija Pródiga to a class or group in your area, reach out to Mabel at mabel@haikufilms.org.
You can follow Mabel on Instagram at @prodigal.daughter.movie.