REDWOOD CITY – “ A Mother’s Story” is really not about TNTs. It’s incendiary in other ways.

The movie blows the lid off broken dreams, broken trusts and broken families in the wake of pursuing greener pastures at the other side of the fence.

It thrusts you into an undocumented alien’s limbo – at once moral, legal and emotional. Beyond the cold hard numbers of deportation cases that ICE publicizes, it is a landscape made by the hand of God and by an act of Congress.

On this surface lands struggling make-up artist Medy, the lead character. Faced with mounting medical bills for her new born and exacerbated by an incapacitated husband with a weakness for gambling, she decides to overstay in the U.S. under the employ of a white lawyer couple.

She hands over her passport and is virtually imprisoned by her unscrupulous employers. Medy’s friend, Helen, (played by Beth Tamayo) ultimately controls her dollar remittance but not before helping herself to a percentage of it. You see, the friend has her own gambling problems and the upkeep of a daughter left behind by her marriage of convenience to think about.

Medy’s eldest son, King (played by Rayver Cruz), feels bitter and betrayed and even now grown-up Queenie (played by child sensation Xyriel Manabat) is indifferent. Their affection for stateside goods soon replaces anything they feel for their absent mother. The father (played by Nonie Buencamino), who never wore the pants in the family, can’t keep it and shacks up with Medy’s other friend at home. Seven years later, Medy is back to pick up the pieces.

Pathos in the right doses enriches a movie. But when it’s piled layer upon layer, underscored by a melancholic piano, it is an all-out assault on the tear glands.

Those who never got past the crying game will love this movie and will even be caught up in the killer hook of the theme song (Sakaling Malimutan Ka sung by Carol Banawa).

Those who prefer to allow pathos, not production, to tell the story like in “The Kite Runner”, will still see a universal mama’s love movie. But comparison to the 2008 Sharon Cuneta-starrer “Caregiver” is not warranted. Many stateside viewers connect with TNT but not OFW. The difference is clearly the U.S. experience vs. the UK.

Set in Northern California’s Bay Area, the movie does not have a time frame reference. Movie Director John D J Lazatin says it’s “post 9/1/1” but more than emphasizing the authenticity of the story, “We prefer the message of the Filipino mother’s self-sacrifice to secure her children’s future.”

The choice of Pokwang (real name Marietta Subong) for the lead role of Medy is a casting triumph.  “It was (ABS-CBN’s Global chief operating officer) Raffy Lopez’s decision,” says Lazatin. Pokwang has been a comedian in Philippine entertainment for over eight years. This is her first dramatic role. Having been a performer herself in the 1990s, notably in Abu Dhabi and Japan, she elicits sympathy.

But her strategic value is that she doesn’t look like any of the pretty half-breeds that overpopulate Philippine entertainment nowadays. Pokwang could be any of the over nine million Filipinos outside of their country in search of work to support their families.

The movie is said to be the first of a planned series of movies about Filipinos in the US produced in the US, according to TFC’s North America Head of Theatrics, Kerwin Du.

There was a time, not too long ago, when mainstream theaters would not screen a Filipino movie. But when Star Cinema’s “No other Woman” (starring Anne Curtis, Derek Ramsay and Christine Reyes) collected almost 150,000 tickets at the box office this year, mainstream theaters realized the drawing power of Filipino movies.

Heartened by this, TFC is going full speed ahead with their production plans. “A Mother’s Story” was also subtitled to hopefully capture the second gen, as well as the foreign viewers.

Besides, Lazatin feels the time has come. “When you have over nine million Filipinos (looking for greener pastures outside their country), it is too big a picture not to look at. There are just too many stories to tell.”

His own Mom died in mid-production, so Lazatin had a new found focus on Medy’s dilemma: “You’re already hungry and you could only pick scraps from the dumpster. What do you do? So Medy had to make a critical decision and not think about the consequences. She decides instinctively. And the decision affects her life.”

And others, as well. No one is untouched by it. Neither the strangers committing acts of random kindness nor the daughter testifying against her opportunistic parents who hired the hapless Medy. “My First Romance”, “Bituin”, “Forever More” and “Arriba! Arriba!” Senedy Que, who wrote the script, lived in the East Coast for seven years and is now living in the Philippines. The script was based on a true story.

The movie was scheduled to premier in L.A. last week, two days after a press screening at ABS-CBN headquarters in Redwood City. It will play across U.S. theaters beginning Nov. 11 in San Francisco, Union City, Milpitas, Sacramento, Chicago, Jacksonville in Florida, Hawaii, Las Vegas, San Diego, Seattle, Virginia and several locations in L.A., Texas and New Jersey.