The Aromanians (Rrãmãnji) are an ethnic group found mainly in today’s Albania, Greece, Bulgaria and Romania. For filmmaker Alexandra Gulea, this question of heritage is connected to the name she shares with her grandmother, who was born into a traditional Aromanian life, and is fluent only in an Aromanian language. The older Alexandra's father suffered a violent death in an uprising for his people's rights, which forced the family out of Greece and into a politically treacherous Balkan landscape deep in the throes of nationalist upheavals, until finally, they found a home in Romania.

Through early documentaries from the period, ethnographic objects and importantly, through her own imagination, Alexandra begins her journey back into her grandmother's world. Maia – Portrait with Hands delights with a mix of techniques which include proto-animation (the drawing of sheep on a meadow tacked against the side window of a car), puppetry (the play with the floating velvet dress) and simple reenactments, all lending her journey a desire for a lost simplicity, an earthiness.