Experiencing Interruptions?

Of the Heart

Distressed by news of her mother’s breast cancer diagnosis, a Filipina American filmmaker reacquaints herself with her mother in a deeper dimension, unearthing her mom’s core beyond her prescribed roles while revealing the spiritual and ancestral threads that connect mother and daughter.

  • Alicia Soller
    Director
  • Brigitte Bello Soller
    Key Cast
  • Alicia Soller
    Writer
  • Alicia Soller
    Cinematographer
  • Alicia Soller
    Editor
  • Natasha Nair
    Colorist
    In the Wake
  • Ralph Loza
    Sound Mixer
  • Alicia Soller
    Producer
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Short, Student
  • Genres:
    Personal, Essay
  • Runtime:
    20 minutes 6 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    January 2, 2023
  • Production Budget:
    5,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    Yes - Northwestern University
  • Digital Cinema Package:
    Unavailable
Director Biography - Alicia Soller

Alicia Soller (she/her) is a Chicago-based filmmaker of the Filipinx diaspora exploring identity, memory, and intergenerational healing through the lens of the personal and intimate. She seeks solidarity, solace, and humanity through nonfiction storytelling, unearthing stories at the margins and the beauty of our lived experiences through meditative imagery and oral history.

Her short film "What We Carry” (2021) follows a young nurse navigating the COVID-19 pandemic amid staggering rates of death among fellow Filipino nurses. Alicia’s most recent project "Of the Heart” (2023) is a personal essay film that reveals the spiritual and ancestral threads that connect mother and daughter.

She earned her Master of Fine Arts in Documentary Media at Northwestern University and Bachelor of Science in Journalism at the University of Florida. She works as an Associate Producer for the WTTW/PBS docuseries "Chicago Stories" and as a Communications Manager for Mezcla Media Collective, a nonprofit arts organization dedicated to supporting women and non-binary filmmakers of color in the Midwest.

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Director Statement

OF THE HEART was born from a place of grief and yearning after my mom revealed her breast cancer diagnosis to our family. Like many Asian American families, we very rarely as a collective show our vulnerabilities in all their colors. We face hardship, but we save face. We keep moving, but don’t process. We talk, but how well are we actually listening to each other?

I realized something profound while I processed the intense fear of losing her: I didn’t know my mom in all her vulnerabilities and intimacies as well as I believe I did. I mean the kind of knowing where you strip away all roles, all pretense, all shame, and you’re left with an individual standing in all their glory – my mom unabashedly in her truest form.

Who is my mother outside of being a wife? Who is she outside of being a mother? The pursuit for answers laid the threadwork to this deeply personal film and the degradation of generational wounds that formed when my mom tragically lost her own mother when she was just 11.

When we speak our truth, we free ourselves, but only we can tell our stories. After years of fragmented conversations, OF THE HEART prompted my mom to give a full oral history of her life so far. Our stories are the roadmap to our roots. When we know our roots, we know ourselves, and I’m proud to have witnessed my mom take center stage in telling her stories in a way I had never seen from her before.

OF THE HEART isn’t just a love letter to my mother – it’s a love letter to the matriarchs before and after me and the curious daughters who crave their stories. There is universality in the stories we tell, no matter how isolated or inconsequential we might perceive them to be, because when we find solace through storytelling, we gain solidarity and affirmation of our humanity.