Aged care homes are so hip and it is good to see how the older generation thinks and how they are being treated is being raised to the wider populace.
First we had Richard Osman’s best-selling fiction The Thursday Murder Club, and now there is the Oscar-nominated documentary The Mole Agent, which is also set in an aged care home.
The documentary by Maite Alberdi, who has received the nomination as director, follows Sergio Chamy, an eighty-something man hired by a private investigator named Rómulo Aitken to infiltrate an aged care home in Chile, South America, as a resident and investigate how the mother of an agency client is being treated. He is told how to use hidden cameras and microphones to uncover the abuse.
However, only a few seconds of Mr Chamy’s spy work is shown as Ms Alberdi already had a film crew inside the aged care home working with the approval of the home’s operator.
“In the end, the film was not about the case or the client,” said Ms Alberdi.
“It was about all the people there. I read a statistic that the highest suicide rates are from people between 80 and 90 years old, because they feel alone. When you see it all day-by-day, you learn and understand how to establish connections between society and families.”
The film shows how relatives don’t visit and how it saddens the hearts of the residents.
A good reminder that if you have a relative in an aged care facility, try and see them regularly. It brings such joy to everyone.
