Mamas
- Directed by: Nicolas Muñoz
- Stage:
- Location:
- Updated: July 20, 2026
- Project Type:
- Project Style:
- Theme Subject:
Logline
In a country with limited resources to fight sex trafficking, mothers and daughters band together to break the cycle of modern slavery and heal from the trauma of an irreparable loss.
Clips
Stills
Team
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Nicolas Muñoz
Director
Team
Nicolas Muñoz
Director
Nicolás Muñoz Documentary Filmmaker & DOP | Buenos Aires, Argentina He studied photography and cinematography at ORT schools, later specializing in documentary filmmaking at INA (France), and honing his craft at UBA (Argentina) and Maine Media College (USA). At age 24, after graduating from film school, he began a 13-year career as a correspondent for Associated Press Television. Covering breaking news across Latin America and beyond, Muñoz reported from extraordinary places and captured urgent, human-centered stories. In 2014, with two young children, he made the difficult decision to leave the news world—stepping away from a stable path into one that was more uncertain, especially financially. He shifted his focus from news to longform documentary work, channeling his journalistic experience into a visual storytelling style that blends strong imagery, emotion, and narrative clarity—even in complex or sensitive environments. In 2018, he won Best Adventure Film at the Banff Film Festival in Canada. Since then, his work has continued to evolve across formats and platforms, earning recognition such as the Sony World Photography Award in 2024 and becoming a Sony Alpha Partner. Today, he collaborates with NGOs, broadcasters, and institutions to tell grounded, human-centered stories with lasting impact. His work explores the intersections of social justice, environmental crisis, and resilience. With a deeply personal approach and a collaborative mindset, Muñoz often works directly with communities to amplify their voices and build powerful narratives from the ground up. -
Juliette Igier
Co-Director & Producer
Team
Juliette Igier
Co-Director & Producer
Juliette Igier is an independent French journalist, filmmaker, and producer who has spent years embedded in Latin America's complex geopolitical landscape. Before locating permanently to Argentina, Juliette built a distinguished career in Paris as a chief editor for French public broadcasters France Télévisions and France 24. Currently, she covers the Southern Cone (Argentina, Bolivia, Uruguay, Chile, and Paraguay) for premier European news outlets, specializing in high-risk investigative reportage.Juliette joined the project in 2015, propelled by the historic catalyst of Argentina’s first Ni Una Menos mobilization. Her integration was vital to the documentary's survival: her hard-news background and international press credentials provided a crucial strategic shield, allowing the team to navigate high-risk territory and secure sensitive access in areas where local production footprint was impossible. Blending editorial rigor with a sharp cinematic eye, Juliette co-directs and produces Mamas, transforming a decade of volatile fieldwork into a powerful, internationally minded narrative of resistance.
Participants
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Maria
Core Subject / Mother fighting for justice
Participant
Maria
Core Subject / Mother fighting for justice
Thirteen years ago, Ailén and her boyfriend vanished without a trace, plunging her family into a devastating judicial and bureaucratic labyrinth. This catastrophic loss forced Maria and her husband into a disproportionate legal crusade, pitting a humble suburban family against the apathy and sheer complicity of the State.
Inside their home in the impoverished outskirts of Buenos Aires, time remains frozen: Ailén’s bedroom sits entirely untouched, a sanctuary suspended in a void. While Maria hangs laundry in the yard—always pinning Ailén’s missing person poster right next to the clothes—her youngest daughter sits quietly in the kitchen shadows, listening to stories of an older sister she barely knew.In this landscape of absolute helplessness, Margarita is the engine that keeps the family going. She serves as their fiercely loyal anchor, guiding and advising them so their case isn't buried by institutional amnesia. Mamas tracks this raw transformation: a couple evolving from isolated, paralyzed grief into a militant force on the streets. Bypassing endless bureaucratic roadblocks, Maria does the only thing she has left to survive: she screams her daughter’s name to the massive crowds of the "Ni Una Menos" protests, demanding answers from a system that tries to look away. -
Margarita Meira
Main Character/The Fierce Matriarch
Participant
Margarita Meira
Main Character/The Fierce Matriarch
Twenty-five years ago—before society even had a term for human trafficking—Margarita’s daughter, Susi, was kidnapped and murdered by a prostitution ring. Plunged into a parent's ultimate nightmare, Margarita refused to be paralyzed by grief. Today, she is the relentless engine of Mamas, a fierce matriarch who channels her irreparable loss into an all-out war against the billion-dollar sex trade and the agonizingly slow, complicit Argentine bureaucracy.Operating out of Constitución—a marginalized Buenos Aires neighborhood rife with drugs and organized crime—Margarita runs a daily community soup kitchen that serves as a frontline triage center. While she feeds the neighborhood's most vulnerable, her door remains the only one open for desperate mothers searching for their missing children and survivors seeking a safe haven. Margarita unapologetically rages against the system that failed her, stepping into the darkest, most dangerous corners of the city to rescue the girls that other mothers are looking for. By fighting to save them, she attempts to save a piece of her own daughter. She is the connective tissue of the film: a mother whose personal tragedy ignited an unstoppable grassroots resistance. -
Rosy
The Vanished Survivor
Participant
Rosy
The Vanished Survivor
Stolen from a rural border town at just fourteen, Rosy spent decades trapped in the cyclical nightmare of Argentina’s sex trade. After enduring years of captivity, repeated escapes, and the devastating rejection of her own family, she recently broke free from a narco-pimp she is now determined to bring to justice. Seeking refuge in Margarita’s clandestine safe house while waiting to testify, Rosy refuses to remain a passive victim. Instead, she transforms her trauma into ammunition, using her firsthand knowledge to map out active brothels and help the mothers locate their missing daughters.But the agonizingly slow legal system leaves her fatally exposed. In a devastating, real-time turn of events, Rosy vanishes again during production. This sudden disappearance radically shifts the documentary's narrative. Rosy goes from being a living, breathing witness to the embodiment of the film's core theme: the crushing void left by those who are taken, and the relentless, ongoing war to find them.
Budget
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Rights
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Our Ask
After a decade of self-funded, clandestine fieldwork, Mamas is 85% shot and at the finish line. We are currently securing completion funds to execute our final, high-risk border shoot and initiate a rigorous post-production pipeline—including the premium CGI/animation required to protect our undercover sources.
We are not entering the market from scratch. The project carries proven international traction, anchored by our confirmed European co-producer, Les Nouveaux Jours Productions. They are currently structuring post-production funds in France and are in advanced talks to secure the film’s European distribution release and major festival placement.
Now, we are seeking the final strategic partners, equity investors, and grantmakers to close our remaining financing gap. We have the trust, the exclusive footage, and the international framework. We need the right allies to push this urgent human rights thriller across the finish line and turn a decade of silence into a cinematic roar.
Now, we are seeking the final strategic partners, equity investors, and grantmakers to close our remaining financing gap. We have the trust, the exclusive footage, and the international framework. We need the right allies to push this urgent human rights thriller across the finish line and turn a decade of silence into a cinematic roar.
We are seeking:
- Funding,
- Co-Production Partners,
- International Co-Production
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