The August Years of May and Gloria is a compassionate, humorous and intimate documentary about an aging mother with Alzheimer’s, May (82) and her adult daughter, Gloria (59). The vérité film follows these two feisty Scottish lassies, who live together and despite their life experience, are still wrestling with their conflicting emotions, difficulties and sometimes ill-fated commitment to do ‘what’s best’. It captures the social adjustments and changing expectations that come into play when mother and daughter find their roles reversed and Mom is reliant on her ‘child’.
May and Gloria decided to move in together for the long haul after May’s husband passed away three years ago. They live with May’s bird, Cheekie, in a little house on a hill in a small Canadian town outside of Toronto, they don’t have much money and Gloria works three days a week as a cook to support them. But as each day becomes more of a struggle, Gloria decides to uproot them and take her mother home to Scotland.
Leaving behind her adopted country is painful to May who also gives up her bird, her friends and her possessions, while she struggles to maintain poise and dignity and triumphantly singing, in a pitch perfect voice, her way through the tragedy of loosing her past.
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The August Years of May and Gloria
TV Distribution: Si Entertainment.
Broadcaster: (premiere, 2010) TVO, Knowledge Network, SCN, stv (Scotland)
Producer/Director: Maureen Judge
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CRITICAL ACCLAIM
The August Years of May and Gloria is a compassionate, humorous and intimate documentary about an aging mother with Alzheimer’s, May (82) and her adult daughter, Gloria (59). The vérité film follows these two feisty Scottish lassies, who live together and despite their life experience, are still wrestling with their conflicting emotions, difficulties and sometimes ill-fated commitment to do ‘what’s best’. It captures the social adjustments and changing expectations that come into play when mother and daughter find their roles reversed and Mom is reliant on her ‘child’.
May and Gloria decided to move in together for the long haul after May’s husband passed away three years ago. They live with May’s bird, Cheekie, in a little house on a hill in a small Canadian town outside of Toronto, they don’t have much money and Gloria works three days a week as a cook to support them. But as each day becomes more of a struggle, Gloria decides to uproot them and take her mother home to Scotland.
Leaving behind her adopted country is painful to May who also gives up her bird, her friends and her possessions, while she struggles to maintain poise and dignity and triumphantly singing, in a pitch perfect voice, her way through the tragedy of loosing her past.