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Take Care of Maya (2023)

Take Care of Maya (2023)

TV-14

While it lacks the incisiveness of a documentary of its scale, Take Care of Maya is fascinating and sensitive enough to bring justice to its delicate subject matter

7.3

Movie

United States of America
English
Documentary
2023
HENRY ROOSEVELT
103 min

TLDR

As if being a parent isn’t stressful enough, now they have medical abductions to worry about???

What it's about

A family from Florida reveals the harrowing ordeal they went through after nine-year-old Maya is rushed to the hospital for exhibiting strange symptoms.

The take

It’s a bit on the sensational side, but this Netflix documentary about a family torn apart by the medical industry is fascinating and empathetic enough to bring justice to its delicate subject matter. Director Henry Roosevelt takes care to use as many angles as possible in presenting the documentary’s central mystery —why is the hospital so insistent on separating Maya from her mother Beata?—while also leaving enough room for the audience to come to their own conclusions. I only wish they would probe into that question a bit more and get experts to hypothesize, for instance, what exactly would the hospital get out of allegedly lying and if it’s an occurrence that’s been happening in many places other than Florida. Painting it as a systemic problem might’ve given it more punch, though admittedly, it’s already stirring and powerful as it is.

What stands out

The children’s grief is something that will haunt you for a good while. Seeing Maya and Kylie grow up via home videos and then grieve later on camera is an unsettling experience that really drives home just how uniquely jarring and unfair the whole situation is. On the flip side, the many families that have come forward with similar experiences, all after hearing about Maya’s case, is an inspiring sight that is hopefully the first step in this arduous but worthwhile fight against medical corporations.

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