Mama Agatha

Once a week, a group of migrant women from Southeast Amsterdam meet in a gymnasium to learn how to cycle. Supervising their bicycle course is a Ghanaian woman nicknamed ‘Mama Agatha’. Over the course of the summer, this revered community mother gives the ladies from China, Pakistan, India and Suriname the confidence to put their fears aside and get behind the two wheels for the first time in their lives. A migrant herself, Mama Agatha knows what it takes to start a chapter later in life. Her face beams as she sees the grown ladies giggle like little children during those first seconds of cycling without support. Some of the women are too tiny for the bicycles, others have religious garb that gets in the way but Mama Agatha laughs it all off. She knows exactly what to say to get the women relaxed enough to try. It's not for nothing that Mama Agatha is a mother figure to everyone she comes in contact with. Her own mother left her when she was five and, ever since then, she has been giving people the kind of love she never received. As the weeks pass, Mama Agatha's students graduate from cycling around the gymnasium to a busy parking lot where they have makeshift bicycle lanes created from paper by Mama Agatha's assistants who happen to be her cousins and nieces. Whether it’s with her students, assistants or even the bigger migrant community of Southeast, Mama Agatha is never afraid to show some tough love when it’s needed and they all accept it from her. There is an inner light about this woman that lets her get away with anything. Over the years, Mama Agatha has made a new family for herself in Southeast: a family of migrants whose stories of heartache and perseverance reflect her own. But why does Mama Agatha need to be surrounded by so many people all the time? Does the pain of a motherless childhood still drive everything she does? As Mama Agatha's students finally take to the streets of Amsterdam on their bicycles, she comes to terms with the painful memory of her mother. MAMA AGATHA is a heart-warming story about letting go of the past and the freedom of riding a bicycle.