Film followed by a live virtual Q&A hosted by filmmaker Dudley Alexis and director and producer Victoria Bouloubasis.
At nearly 100 years old, Doña Miriam confronts the end of her life cycle, passing on her wisdom as the last living traditional Costa Rican midwife in the region. Inspired by her courage and strength, a new generation pushes for stronger women-centered healthcare at the foot of an active volcano.
The Last Partera is a feature documentary film that follows Miriam Elizondo's final years. Our story captures a portrait of her life and legacy while also looking at the changing face of women's rights and health. Doña Miriam’s influence spans far and wide, with her own descendants visiting her, as well as nurse-midwife and mentee Rebecca Turecky helping spread her legacy through communities of midwives, doulas and students from around the world. The honorable and respected Doña Miriam, however, is no saint. While she blesses the mothers with a Catholic sign of the cross, she also teases her proteges, doles out sexual advice as a centenarian, and jokes about her own death. Doña Miriam is as human as she is divine.
About Dudley Alexis
Dudley Alexis is an independent filmmaker who uses his lens to document the stories of people who are often overlooked. His storytelling is able to reveal their tales of tragedy and triumph, all while emphasizing their drive for dignity and equality in a world that frequently marginalizes them. His work focuses on the intersections between social justice, climate change, economics, and cultural memory. Dudley began his career as a filmmaker and visual artist in Miami, Florida, where he started producing short documentary pieces focused on the First Nation Miccosukee Tribe of Florida. His body of work has since grown to include several impactful documentaries, such as Liberty in a Soup (2016), which was recognized by UNESCO following the designation of Soup Joumou as an intangible cultural heritage. His acclaimed documentary, When Liberty Burns, offers an in-depth exploration of the life and tragic death of Arthur McDuffie at the hands of Miami-Dade police in 1979. This film earned nominations for both the Suncoast Regional Emmy Awards and the Knight Made in Miami Film Award. Recent works include the Edge of Hope, an examination of communities grappling with the frontlines of climate injustice in Miami, Florida. The Creole Pig: Haiti’s Great Loss (released on WLRN and PBS in 2025), tells the story of a vital and resilient animal central to Haitian rural life that was eradicated in the 1980s by the USDA and Haitian government—an event that deepened the country’s economic challenges.
About Victoria Bouloubasis
Director & Producer Victoria Bouloubasis is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker and journalist based in Durham, N.C. Her work aims to dispel myths about the Global South against the backdrop of complex social, political and personal histories. In 2024, she directed and co-produced FORGET ME NOT for Univision, an Emmy-nominated short doc about the rising rates of dementia in the Mexico-Texas borderlands. In 2023, RISING UP IN THE HEARTLAND (Univision) won 1st place in the Documentary Journalism category at the Picture of the Year International (POYi) contest, a 1st place ONA award for pandemic coverage, and was nominated for a 2023 News & Doc Emmy. HEROES OF THE PANDEMIC, a Univision/Enlace Latino NC film she co-directed and co-produced, won a 2021 Murrow Award and two 2021 Webby Awards. NIÑAS, a film she co-directed and produced with Agencia Ocote in Guatemala, was part of a comprehensive transmedia project that won the 2022 Premio Gabo. She was a producer for the PBS docuseries SOMEWHERE SOUTH (2020). Victoria has reported from the US South and rural Midwest, Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Costa Rica and Greece. She is an alumna of the New Orleans Film Society Southern Producers Lab, DocShop South, IWMF, and UC Berkeley's Investigative Reporting Film Fellowship. THE LAST PARTERA is her first feature.
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