Por un parto seguro, digno, libre de violencia
“The Last Partera” Documentary
As published at thelastpartera.com
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.
THE LAST PARTERA had a sold-out world premiere at Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2025. Full Frame called the film “a celebration of the profound, unwavering camaraderie and respect that unites them, despite the challenges, and of the indomitable female spirit—a vital story in a time when women’s reproductive rights are more critical, and under threat, than ever.”
Directed by Victoria Bouloubasis & Ned Phillips
Produced by Pilar Timpane
SUPPORT
The filmmakers are committed to screening THE LAST PARTERA around the world and using the film to stimulate important discussions about pregnancy, childbirth, midwifery, women’s health and women’s rights in general. The medical model of maternity care puts physicians in a hierarchical role and emphasizes invasive obstetric techniques, whereas the midwifery model is woman-centered and emphasizes the natural, inherently healthy process of birthing. Midwifery humanizes childbirth and demonstrates that empowering women as the primary agents in their healthcare decisions will enhance – rather than impede – modern medical practice.
THE LAST PARTERA is a distinctly feminist portrayal of midwifery as a woman-centered tradition fundamentally opposite the patriarchal model of standardized maternity care. Thus, through the stories of Doña Miriam, Rebecca and the Costa Rican women who have chosen home birth, THE LAST PARTERA artfully presents midwifery’s rootedness in women’s collective wisdom, thereby making an original contribution to the continued fight for women’s reproductive rights.
Join us in supporting this beautiful and important film and bringing it to local and global audiences. You can make a tax-deductible contribution to our project through the Southern Documentary Fund. Thank you for your support.
PHOTOGRAPHY
One of the protagonists and mentee of Doña Miriam Elizondo is Rebecca Turecky, C.N.M., N.D., a Costa Rican / U.S. dual citizen.
Rebecca resides in the rural mountain town of Turrialba, Costa Rica and has lovingly assisted more than 1000 natural births, as one of the only independent home birth midwives still practicing in the country.
In the year 2000, she co-founded the Mamasol Association (www.mamasol.com), a non-profit organization which promotes the «Humanization of childbirth» in Costa Rica. This grassroots movement educates and advocates for a more holistic and feminist model of health care and denounces the pervasive obstetric violence against women in the maternity hospitals.
Throughout the decades, Mamasol has organized large public awareness events, collaborated with nursing education at the University of Costa Rica, offered consultation with the C.C.S.S. national maternal health care policy makers, supported legislation for Human Rights in Childbirth (Ley #10081), and trained over 250 doulas in their Escuela de Doulas.
The Filmmakers
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.
Ned Phillips
Director & Cinematographer
Ned Phillips is an Emmy-award winning filmmaker based in Durham, North Carolina.
He graduated with honors from Goucher College and went on to earn a certificate in Documentary Arts from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. Since then, he has shot and edited multiple films, including work that has screened at Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, DOC NYC, and Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival, among others.
He currently works as a producer, cinematographer and editor with PBS North Carolina and Peabody award winning production company Markay Media, which produced the Emmy-award winning PBS documentary series A CHEF’S LIFE, HBO limited series BURDEN OF PROOF and the upcoming AMAZON feature film, The Double.
Ned’s directorial debut, THE MAESTRO (2018), premiered at the RiverRun International Film Festival.
THE LAST PARTERA is his first feature.
Pilar Timpane
Producer & Writer
Pilar Timpane is an award-winning filmmaker and producer based in Durham, NC, and the lead of Teacup Productions.
Her work has focused on women’s stories, immigration narratives, and religious communities with the aim of using storytelling for social change. She holds a BA from Rutgers University and a Masters in Theological Studies from Duke University Divinity School. Her recent short documentary A HOUSE FOR MY MOTHER won the Best Documentary Short Jury Prize at Oxford Film Festival, 2025.
She co-directed and produced SANTUARIO (2019, PBS/ReelSouth & AlJazeera). SANTUARIO was the winner of the Best Documentary Short Jury Prize at New Orleans Film Festival 2018 as well as the Crested Butte ActNow Award and the IF/Then Shorts American South Pitch.
She is an alumna of the New Orleans Film Society Southern Producers Lab, Indie Grits Real Fiction Lab, and Women in Film/Stella Artois Finishing Fund. She was named a 2021 Ella Fountain Pratt Emerging Artist by the Durham Arts Council.
Pilar is a 2022 ITVS/NEH Humanities Documentary Development Fellow and a Logan Nonfiction Program Fellow.