From Omeleto.
A teenager must help her mother.
THE LADDER is used with permission from Noam Argov. Learn more at https://noamargov.com.
Alma is a teenager who immigrated to Central Florida with her mother. On the morning of a crucial math exam, her mother discovers a leak in their apartment ceiling. Her mother, unable to communicate effectively in English, leans on Alma to accompany her to the hardware store to buy a ladder.
Worried about her exam and missing meeting with her friends before the test, Alma is reluctant when her mother pulls her away to help translate at a store. As tensions build between mother and daughter, Alma rebels at the store, leading to a breakdown in communication and a strain in their relationship.
Directed and written by Noam Argov, this poignant short drama examines the immigrant experience through the perspective of a tense mother-daughter relationship. As a young teenager, Alma is already at an age where she wants to establish her independence and identity, separating from the closeness of the family unit. But having a mother who hasn’t mastered the language has skewed the usual dynamics of the parent-child relationship, enmeshing Alma and her mother uncomfortably. Alma’s mother relies on Alma to translate for her, and Alma is beginning to bristle under the dependency, just when she wants to strike out on her own.
The narrative requires attention to the unspoken sentiments simmering underneath the surface of the relationship, achieved here with intimate, natural visual storytelling. The cinematography’s colors are warm and sun-soaked, evoking the humid, hazy sun of Central Florida — you can feel the heat and humidity in the air from the rough-hewn, evocative images. Alma and her mother are often framed closely, letting us see their fleeting reactions and experiencing a sense of emotional claustrophobia at times.
As the growing conflict plays out through an everyday household dilemma, the perceptive writing portrays Alma’s relative ease in the U.S., but that ease also makes her an intermediary for her mother when it comes to navigating a new language and culture. As a de facto translator for her parent, Alma experiences this role as a silent burden, as well as an unspoken set of expectations placed on her.
As Alma, actor Oriah Elgrabli brings a naturalness and understatement to the role of a dutiful but resentful teen daughter character. She’s torn between her familial duty and her desire for growing autonomy, a conflict that ripens and then erupts during a heated exchange at the hardware store. It leads to a moment of outright rebellion and defiance, and a fierce reaction from her mother, played by actor Mor Cohen.
But it also brings to the surface those unspoken expectations and resentments, which brings THE LADDER to its quiet, graceful conclusion. Mother and daughter achieve an understanding of one another’s complex feelings, illuminating how a web of interdependence can become codependency. But at the heart of it all is a deep love and loyalty, one that endures beyond language and situation and keeps them bonded.
