The touching “Prodigal Daughter” tells the story of a new kind of immigrant

When Mabel Valdiviezo first emigrated from Peru to San Francisco in 1993, she had no idea if she would ever return.

At the age of 25, she left her family home for personal and political reasons. She grew up as one of seven children in a working-class neighborhood on the outskirts of Lima, feeling neglected and not always safe at home. As a young adult, she found her place in Lima’s art, punk, and cultural underground, but as Peru fell under the dictatorship of the Fujimori regime, her activist friends were increasingly targeted, interrogated, and kidnapped. She felt misunderstood by her family and became accustomed to being ridiculed because of her appearance; sometimes strangers threw stones at her in the street.

“First of all, I realized that ‘I can’t develop as a person here, especially if I want to be an artist,’” says Valdiviezo more than 30 years later.

Three decades after she landed in the Mission District with no plan beyond a one-year tourist visa, the artist’s journey will take center stage at Cine+Mas SF, San Francisco’s Latino film festival. The prodigal daughterValdiviezo’s documentary about her life in the city as an illegal immigrant and her reunion with her family in Peru after 16 long years of separation – premiered on Friday, October 11 at the Roxie Theater, kicking off the 16th edition of the annual festival.

This year’s festival runs through November 3 and includes virtual events and in-person screenings and panels at the Mission Cultural Center, Yerba Buena Arts Center and KQED headquarters, as well as at the Roxie Theater. And there is no shortage of films created by local talents: The beautiful pain of muralists follows seven Latino muralists from the Bay Area as they face challenges as artists of color; Shark mouth is a short documentary about Bay Area dancer and choreographer Ramón Ramos Alayo; and the San Francisco set Parole sees local filmmaker Lázaro J. González, a queer Cuban refugee, struggling with the distance between him and his mother at home.

For Valdiviezo The prodigal daughterthe opening night screening of the film – followed by a question-and-answer session – represents a level of creative fulfillment and support she couldn’t have imagined during her first few years in the city.

Without financial security, with knowledge of English and (after the visa expired) undocumented status, the chances of finding a job were slim.

Forging your own path

“I didn’t want to work in factories,” she recalls. “I tried to be an artist, I was rebellious, I wanted to follow my own path. So I had to look for other ways.” She tried unsuccessfully to become an artistic model, and also tried to start a journalistic career. Eventually, she says, she found a job dancing in North Beach clubs, where she earned enough to pay the rent and finance the artistic career she dreamed of, but she also met people and habits that soon thwarted her ambitions.

“It started well, making money, and it seemed like there were all sorts of opportunities here,” he says. “But because it’s this particular kind of world… you have really limited control. I know in feminism some people might say, “Oh, that’s empowering,” but I guess it depends. If you are undocumented, brunette or Latina, it’s a completely different story. She struggled with addiction, cut herself off from her family and felt lost for several years. Despite this, she did not stop creating art.